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EDITED BY NATO THOMPSON

LIVING AS FORM

LIVING AS FORM:
SOC1ALLY ENGAGED ART
FROM 1991-2011

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UBRARY

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EDITED BY NATO THOMPSON
CREATIVETIME BOOKS, NEW YORK

THE MIT PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS AND LONDON, ENGLAND

COKTEMTS

FOREWORD 7

Anne Pasternak

LIVING AS FORM 16

Nato Thompson

PARTICIPATION AND SPECTACLE: 34

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Claire Bishop

RETURNING ON BIKES: 46

NOTES ON SOCIAL PRACTICE

Maria Lind

DEMOCRATIZING URBANIZATION AND 56

THE SEARCH FOR A NEW CMC I MAGI NATION

Teddy Cruz

MICROUTOPIAS: 64

PUBLIC PRACTICE IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Carol Becker

EVENTWORK: THE FOURFOLD MATRIX 72

OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Brian Holmes

LIVING TAKES MANY FORMS 86

Shannon Jackson

PROJECTS 94

Ai Weiwei 96

Ala Plåstica 98

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla 100

Lara Almarcegui and Begona Movellån 102

Alternate R00TS 104

Francis Alys 105

Appalshop 108

Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle 108

Claire Barclay 112

Barefoot Artists 114

Basurama 116

BijaRi 119

Bread and Puppet Theater 120

i Tania Bruguera 121

CAMP 122

Cemeti Art House 122

PaulChan 125

MelChinetal. 127

Chto Delat? (What is to be done?) 129

Santiago Cirugeda 130

Cambalache Colectivo 130

Phil Collins 132

Céline Condorelli and Gavin Wade 134

Cornerstone Theater Company 136

Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann 138

Minerva Cuevas 140

Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency 140

Jeremy Deller 142

Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett,
and collaborators 146

Marilyn Douala-Bell and Didier Schaub 148

Election Night, Harlem, New York 148

Fallen Fruit 150

Bita Fayyazi, Ata Hasheminejad,

Khosrow Hassanzadeh, Farid
Jahangirand Sassan Nassiri 152

Finishing School 154

Free Class Frankfurt/M 156

Frente 3 de Fevereiro 157

Theaster Gates 160

Alonso Gil and Federico Guzmån 162

Paul Glover 164

Josh Greene 165

Fritz Haeg 166

Haha 168

j Helena Producciones 170

Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter 171

Fran llich 172

Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen 173
Amal Kenawy 175

Surasi Kusolwong 175

Bronwyn Lace and Anthea Moys

Suzanne Lacy

Land Foundation

Long March Project

Los Angeles Poverty Department

Mammalian Diving Reflex

Mardi Gras Indian Community

Angela Melitopoulos

Zayd Minty

The Mobile Academy

Mujeres Creando

Vik Muniz

Navin Production Studio
Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK)

Nuts Society
John 0'Neal
Oda Projesi

Park Fiction and the Right
to the City NetWork Hamburg
Pase Usted

Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy)

Platforma 9.81

Public Movement

Pulska Grupa

Pedro Reyes

Laurie Jo Reynolds

Athi-Patra Ruga

The San Francisco Cacophony Society

The Sarai Programme at CSDS and Ankur

Christoph Schlingensief

Florian Schneider

Katerina Sedå

Chemi Rosado Seijo

Michihiro Shimabuku

Buster Simpson

Slanguage

SUPERFLEX

Apolonija Sustersic

Tahrir Square

Taller Popular de Serigrafia
(Popular Silkscreen Workshop)
Temporary Services
Torolab

Mierle Laderman Ukeles
Ultra-red

United Indian Health Services

Urban Bush Women

US Social Forum

Bik van der Pol

Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Eduardo Våsquez Martin

Voina

Marion von Osten

244

Peter Watkins

246

WikiLeaks

246

Elin Wikstrom

247

WochenKlausur

249

Women on Waves

250

THE LEONORE ANNENBERG PRIZE

FOR ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE

252

The Yes Men

254

Rick Lowe

256

Jeanne van Heeswijk

258

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

261

CREDITS

262

COLOPHON

263

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FOREWORD

Over twenty years ago, artist Peggy Diggs sat
in a Western Massachusetts prison and Lis-
tened as women recounted the abuses they
had suffered at the hands of their spouses.
She learned that these women were often pris-
oners in their own hornes, unable to tell their
stories or get assistance. Many only left their
house to conduct basic household errands,
such as grocery shopping. Diggs saw an
opportunity to help. She enlisted Tuscan Dairy
Farms to print a question—"When you argue at
home, does it always get out of hand?"—and an
abuse hotline number on over one million milk
cartons distributed in New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. She
believed that this message was worth hearing,
and that the supermarket was the right forum
in which to spread it.

I encountered Diggs' The Domestic Milk
Carton Project, a Creative Time commission,
several years before joining the organization,
while I was pouring milk into my coffee. At the
time, a friend would call frequently with com-
plaints about her abusive fiancée, and I rarely
knew what to say. (It took the murder of O.J.
Simpsons wife Nicole Brown in 1994 to lift
the veil of shame and secrecy around domes¬
tic violence.) So, I called the hotline number.
I had no idea that l'd just experienced public
art; nor did it matter. What did matter was that

the image, and the message, provoked me to
pause, think, learn, and act.

For thirty-seven years, Creative Time has
been challenging audiences to expand their
views while encouraging artists to broaden
and deepen their relationships to the press¬
ing issues of our times and the communities
they effect. Projects such as Diggs'; Julian
LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda's Tribute in Light
illuminating Lower Manhattan after 9/11; Gran
Furys famed Kissing Doesn't Kili billboards
about HIV transmission; Paul Chans Waiting
for Godot in Post-Katrina New Orleans; Paul
Ramirez Jonas' civic artwork Key to the City ;
Sharon Hayes' Revolutionary Love address-
ing the state of queer desire; and Tania Bru-
gueras Immigrant Movement International
have upheld Creative Times historie belief
that artists matter in society and that public
spaces are places for their free and Creative
expression.

In recent years, there has been a rap-
idly growing movement of artists choosing to
engage with timely issues by expanding their
practice beyond the safe confines of the studio
and right into the complexity of the unpredict-
able public sphere. This work has many names:
"relational aesthetics," "social justice art,"
"social practice," and "community art," among
others. These artists engage in a process that

LIVING AS fORM

includes careful listening, thoughtful conver-
sation, and community organizing. With ante-
cedents such as the Dada Cabaret Voltaire,
Joseph Beuys' notion of Social Sculpture,
Allan Kaprows "happenings," Gordon Matta
Clarke's interventions, radical community
theater of the 1960s, Lygia Clarks Tropicålia
movement in Brazil, the community-based
public art projects of groundbreaking artists
such as Suzanne Lacy, Mierle Laderman Uke-
les and Rick Lowe to social movements from
the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements to
the Green Party, social practice artists create
forms of living that activate communities and
advance public awareness of pressing social
issues. In the process, they expand models
of art, advance ways of being an artist, and
involve new publics in their efforts.

Despite the growing prevalence of this
art practice, and the rise of graduate art pro¬
grams offering degrees in social practice art,
relatively few among the growing masses of
art enthusiasts are aware of its existence,
let alone its vibrancy. To be fair, this kind of
work does not hang well in a museum, and it
isn't commercially viable. Furthermore, social
practice art has lacked a shared critical lan-
guage and comprehensive historie doeu-
mentation. Creative Times own engagement
with the social was often dismissed in an art
world that prefers to frame artists as commod-
ity makers rather than change makers, and
where many assert that politics and art have
no place together. At Creative Time, we have
always felt otherwise. So, in 2006 we launched
Who Cares, a projeet that brought artists and
thinkers together to discuss the role of art and
activism. This ultimately led to the creation of
The Creative Time Summit, our annual confer¬
ence on art and social justice, and presenta-
tion of The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art
and Social Change.

Living os Form, an exhibition and book that
looks at social practice art from around the
globe, further extends this legaey. It is, admit-
tedly, a problematic undertaking. After all, how
does one present site-specific, community-
based work outside of its context? How can
a history be written when there are unlimited

and complex social, cultural, economic, politi-
cal, religious, and class constructs at play?
Where does one begin to tell the story? With
the manifestos of modem art movements? With
the global social protests that ignited the new
millennium, or with the impact of microfinanc-
ing and small do-it-yourself NGOs in places
of need? How does one weave together the
diverse narratives of feminist, African-Amer-
ican, and Latino practices that have largely
been dismissed as "community art"? How
does one deal with differences among local
conditions around the world where dictatorial
regimes make every act of artistic expression
a potential danger that can lead to jail, torture,
and even death? (I am reminded in particular
of the recent imprisonments and torture of art¬
ist Ai Weiwei and the tragie assignation of the¬
ater director Juliano Mer-Khamis in the West
Bank.) And, perhaps most importantly, what
are the ethical implications of this practice?

In light of these questions and the many
others surrounding social practice art, Cre¬
ative Time Chief Curator Nato Thompson took
an unusual and difficult path organizing the
Living as Form projeet. Rather than attempt-
ing an authoritative historical survey or com-
piling a "best of" list, he conceived of Living
as Form in order to raise fundamental ques¬
tions that advance dialogue, ignite conversa-
tion, and promote greater understanding of
social practice work for the complicated and
important field that it is. In this pursuit, Nato
turned to twenty-five advising curators, who
have guided our understanding of the com-
plexities of the field and exposed us to many
new artists working within it. We thank: Caron
Atlas, Negar Azimi, Ron Bechet, Claire Bishop,
Brett Bloom, Rashida Bumbray, Carolina Cay-
cedo, Ana Paula Cohen, Common Room, Teddy
Cruz, Sofia Hernåndez Chong Cuy, Gridthiya
Gaweewong, Hou Hanru, Stephen Hobbs, Mar-
cus Neustetter, Shannon Jackson, Maria Lind,
Chus Martinez, Sina Najafi, Marion von Osten,
Ted Purves, Raqs Media Collective, Gregory
Sholette, SUPERFLEX, Christine Tohme, and
Sue Bell Yank.

This book features essays by acclaimed
theorists and practitioners Claire Bishop, Teddy

FOREWORD

Cruz, Maria Lind, Carol Becker, Shannon
Jackson, and Brian Holmes, who each look at
the phenomenon of social practice in art from
vastly different global, and critical perspec-
tives. Claire Bishop questions the tendency
to privilege ethical standards over aesthetic
ones, while Brian Holmes provides a four-
step process of producing social practice that
values both of these standards equally. Carol
Becker describes the uniqueness of artist-
designed "microutopias" while Maria Lind
recounts numerous projects across Europe
that demonstrate long-term investment in the
messy realities of life outside of the artistic
context.

We are deeply grateful to Nato who is a
most fervent champion of art and social jus-
tice. He is that rare curator and scholar that
insists that artists not only create, but also
create important change. Research for this
project was lead by curatorial fellow Leah Abir,
who joined us from Israel thanks to our part-
nership with Artis, a non-profit that supports
Israeli contemporary art around the world.

We applaud Sharmila Venkatasubban, our
talented editor who masterfully brought this
book to Ufe. It is always a pleasure to work with
the designer Garrick Gott, who creates elegant
order from chaos. Special thanks goes to our
copy editor Clinton Krute and proofreader Ann
Holcomb, as well as all the interns and fellows
who made this book a reality: Madeline Lieber-
berg, Winona Packer, Shraddha Borowake,
Phillip Griffith, and Rachel Ichniowski.

We cannot say enough just how profound-
ly grateful we are to the donors who believed
in this project and, despite a turbulent global
economy, recognized the importance of artists
as agents for change and generously invested
in this project. Specific funding for Living as
Form has been provided by the Lily Auchin-
closs Foundation, Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo,
the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Dan¬
ish Arts Council Committee for Visual Arts,
Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation, Bella Meyer and Martin
Kace, the Mondriaan Foundation, the Nation¬
al Endowment for the Arts, the Panta Rhea
Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,

the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts,
Design and Architecture, Emily Glasser and
William Susman, and the Laurie M. Tisch lllu-
mination Fund. We give special thanks to the
Annenberg Foundation for continued support
of The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and
Social Change, a $25,000 award that each year
acknowledges an artist who has devoted his or
her lifes work to promoting social justice.

I'm particularly blessed to work with an
incredible team. The Creative Time Board sup¬
ports our every dream and trusts in us to real-
ize them. That trust is essential as it frees art¬
ists to follow their instincts—unencumbered
by bureaucracy and fear—without which great
art cannot happen. The Creative Time staff is
devoted to artists and takes exceptional efforts
to make magic happen every day.

Above all, we thank the artists who engage
in social practice for their inspiration and for
daring to make an impact on our world. We
hope through their work, this book will inspire
further scholarship and action.

Anne Pasternak, President and Artistic Director, Creative Time

FoUowingpages: Creative Ttme's Living as Form took place at the historie Essex Street Market in Mannhattaris Lower East Side.

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NATOTH

OMPSON

UVING AS FORM

WHAT STRIKES ME IS THE FACT THAT
IN OUR SOCIETY, ART HAS BECOME
SOMETHING WHICH IS RELATED
ONLY TO OBJECTS AND NOT TO
INDIVIDUALS, OR TO LIFE. THAT ART IS
SOMETHING WHICH IS SPECIALIZED OR
WHICH IS DONE BY EXPERTS WHO ARE

ARTISTS. BUT COU

.DNT EVERYONES

LIFE BECOME A WORK OF ART? WHY
SHOULD THE LAMp OR HOUSE BE AN
OBJECT, BUT NOT OUR LIFE?

— Michd Foucault

WENT FROM BEING AN ARTIST
WHO MAKES THINGS,

TO BEING AN ARTIST
WHO MAKES THINGS HAPPEN.

erertny

Del ler

LIVING AS FORM

PART I: LIVING AS FORM

Women on Waves is an activist/art organiza-
tion founded in 2001 by physician Rebecca
Gomperts. The small nonprofit group would
sail from the coasts of countries where abor¬
tion is illegal in a boat designed by Atelier
Van Leishout that housed a functioning abor¬
tion clinic. Gomperts and her crew would then
anchor in international waters—since the boat
was registered in The Netherlands, they oper-
ated under Dutch law—to provide abortion
Services to women, legally and safely. The fol-
lowing quote is from a documentary film about
the history of Women on Waves. While reading,
bear in mind the almost Homeric qualities this
seafaring narrative conjures. It is a drama, and
this is no accident.

"As the ship sails into the Valencia har-
bor, conservatives dispatch ships bear-
ing banners reading "no" and drumming
thunders from the anti-choice protes-
tors leaning on the gates to the port. The
dock is mobbed with supporters and
aggressive press. As the ship attempts
to tie up, a dissenting harbor patrol
ship lodges itself between the Women
on Waves ship and the dock, securing
their lines to the ship and attempting
to drag the ship back to sea, while the
activists frantically try to untie the line.

The authorities seem to be winning
the tug of war, when Rebecca, clearly
enjoying the moment, emerges from the
hoie wielding a large knife. The crowd
onshore thunderously stomps and
cheers as she slices the patrols rope in
half,freeing her ship, bows to the crowd,
and tosses the Women on Waves lines
to the eager supporters. As the harbor
patrols motorboat circles, baffied and
impotent, hundreds of hands pull the
ship into dock."

Seven years later, for his project Palas PorPis-
tolas, the artist Pedro Reyes collected 1,527
weapons from residents of Culiacån, a West¬
ern Mexican city known for drug trafficking

and a high rate of fatal gunfire. Working with
local television stations, he invited citizens to
donate their firearms in exchange for vouch-
ers that could be redeemed for electronics
and appliances from domestic shops. The
1,527 weapons—more than forty percent of
which were issued by the military—were pub-
licly steamrolled into a mass of flattened metal,
melted down in a local foundry, and recast into
1,527 shovels. Reyes distributed the shovels
to local charities and school groups, which
used them to plant 1,527 trees in public spac-
es throughout the city. The spades have been
widely exhibited, with labels attached explain-
ing their origins; each time they are shown,
they are used to plant more trees.

Here we have before us two socially
engaged art projects—both poetic, yet func-
tionaland politicalas well.They engage people
and confront a specific issue. While these par-
ticipatory projects are far removed from what
one might call the traditional studio arts—such
as sculpture, film, painting, and video—what
field they do belong to is hard to articulate.
Though defined by an active engagement with
groups of people in the world, their intentions
and disciplines remain elusive. Are these proj¬
ects geared for the media? Each project flour-
ished among news outlets as these artists cre-
ated new spin around old stories: a womans
right to choose and the drug wars of North¬
ern Mexico. Women on Waves has performed
relatively few abortions over the course of
seven years. In fact, the boat has mainly been
deployed as a media device intended to bring
awareness to the issue. Similarly, Pedro Reyes
did remove 1,527 guns from the streets of Culi¬
acån. But, given the actual extent of gun vio-
lence there, his gesture seems far more sym-
bolic than practical.

And yet, symbolic gestures can be power-
ful and effective methods for change. Planting
trees does improve quality of life, and using
recycled guns to do so speaks directly to those
most affected by the violence. Likewise, Wom¬
en on Waves provided essential Services to
women in anti-choice countries, regardless of
how many were actually able to take advantage
of them. While we may not know how to cat-

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egorize these projects, they typify a growing
array of complex cultural production that con-
tinues to garner interest and adherents. Say
what one will, socially engaged art is growing
and ubiquitous.

The projects in Living as Form expose
the numerous lines of tension which have
surfaced in socially engaged art in the past
twenty years, essentially shaking up founda-
tions of art discourse, and sharing techniques
and intentions with fields far beyond the arts.
Unlike its avant-garde predecessors such as
Russian Constructivism, Futurism, Situation-
ism, Tropicalia, Happenings, Fluxus, and Dada-
ism, socially engaged art is not an art move-
ment. Rather, these cultural practices indicate
a new social order—ways of life that emphasize
participation, challenge power, and span disci-
plines ranging from urban planning and com¬
munity work to theater and the visual arts.

This veritable explosion of work in the
arts has been assigned catchphrases, such
as "relational aesthetics," coined by French

curator Nicholas Bourriaud, or Danish curator
Lars Bang Larsens term, "social aesthetics."
We can also look to artist Suzanne Lacy s "new
genre public art," or the commonly known
West Coast term "social practice." Other pre-
cursors include Critical Art Ensembles activ-
ist approach called "tactical media" and Grant
Kesters "dialogic art," which refers to conver-
sation-based projects. We can also go back
further to consider Joseph Beuyss "social
sculpture." Numerous genres have been
deeply intertwined in participation, sociality,
conversation, and "the civic." This intercon-
nectivity reveals a peculiar historie moment
in which these notions aren't limited to the
world of contemporary art, but ineludes vari-
ous cultural phenomena which have cropped
up aeross the urban fabric. For example, spon-
taneous bike rides in cities by the group Criti¬
cal Mass, guerrilla community gardens, and
micro-granting community groups are just
a few of the non-discipline-specific cultural
projects which share many of the same criteria

Åbove: The Women on Waves ship prepares to sail to Poland in June 2003 (Courtesy Women on Waves).

LIVING AS FORM

as socially engaged artworks.

How do we write such an interdisciplin-
ary, case-specific narrative without producing
misleading causal relationships? The desire
to merge art and Life resonates throughout the
avant-garde movements of thetwentieth cen-
tury and then multiplies across the globe at the
beginning of the twenty-first. Artists have bor-
rowed from a plethora of h i sto ri es—from Rus-
sian Constructivists, Fluxus, Gutai, Tropicalia,
and Happenings to Antonin Artauds Theater
of Cruelty, Boals Theater of the Oppressed,
and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. However,
it would be a mistake not to place within that
history the seminal pedagogic social move¬
ments of the last one hundred years. This
includes AIDS activism, the womens move-
ment, the anti-Apartheid movement, Perestroi-
ka, the civil rights movement Paris '68, the
Algerian wars, as well as the many leaders and
visionaries within those movements who dis-
cussed the importance of sociality, methods of
resistance and confronting power, and strate-
giesfor using media. History itself is a problem
when it leads to a false sense of causality. If
we follow the trail of this work strictly through
the lens of art (which is what most discipline-
specific histories do), we could easily imagine
a very Western trajectory moving from Dada to
Rirkrit Tiravanija in 1991 making Pad Thai—
a version of a history in quick strokes. But of
course, this kind of highly problematic nar¬
rative lacks a true appreciation of the vast
complexity of global and local influences, an
all-too-common signpost for the contempo-
rary period. Art is no longer the primary influ-
ence for culture and because of this, tracing
its roots is all the more complex.

Living as Form searches the post-Cold War
era, and the dawn of neoliberalism, for cultural
works which serve as points of departure for
specific regional and historie concerns. How¬
ever, this book does not offer a singular critical
language for evaluating socially engaged art,
nor provide a list of best practices, nor offer a
linear historie interpretation of a field of prac-
tice. Instead, we merely present the tempera-
ture in the water in order to raise compelling
questions.

WHAT IS MEANT BY LIVING?

Artists have long desired that art enter life.
But what do me mean by "life"? In the context
of Living as Form, the word conjures certain
qualities that I wish to explore, an aggregate
of related but different manifestations of the
term.

Anti-representational

When artist Tania Bruguera states, "I don't
want an art that points at a thing, I want an
art that is the thing," she emphasizes forms
of art that involve being in the world. Yet, she
has also said, "It is time to put Duchamps uri-
nal back in the restroom." Duchamps "Ready-
mades" are a great place to initiate the con-
versation about art and life. For some artists,
the desire to make art that is living stems from
the desire for something breathing, performa-
tive, and action-based. Participation, sociality,
and the organization of bodies in space play
a key feature in much of this work. Perhaps in
reaction to the steady state of mediated two-
dimensional cultural produetion, or a reaction
to the alienating effects of spectacle, artists,
activists, citizens, and advertisers alike are
rushing headlong into methods of working
that allow genuine interpersonal human rela¬
tionships to develop. The call for art into life at
this particular moment in history implies both
an urgency to matter as well as a privileging
of the lived experience. These are two different
things, but within much of this work, they are
blended together.

Participation

In recent years, we have seen increased growth
in "participatory art": art that requires some
action on behalf of the viewer in order to com-
plete the work. Consider Tiza (2002) by artists
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. This
public space intervention consisted of twelve
enormous pieces of chalk set out in public
squares. People used discarded remnants or
broke off a chunk to write messages on the
ground. Since Allora and Calzadilla generally
choose urban environments with politically
confrontational histories, the writing tends to
reflect political resentment and frustrations.

Opposite: In Pedro Reyes’ PalasporPistolas , 1,527 shovels were made from the melted metal of 1,527 guns collected from residents of Culicån, and used to plant
1,527 trees in the community (Courtesy Pedro Reyes and LABOR).

UVING AS FORM

This is just one example of numerous works
that enter life by facilitating participation.

Situated in the "real” world

Clearly, an urge to enter the "real" world
inherently implies that there is an "un-real"
world where actions do not have impact or
resonance. Nonetheless, we find in numerous
socially engaged artworks that the desire for
art to enter life comprises a spatial component
as well. Getting out of the museum or gallery
and into the public can often come from an
artists belief or concern that the designated
space for representation takes the teeth out of
a work. For example, Amal Kenawy's Silence of
the Lambs (2010) focused on a performance
in Cairo wherein members of the public were
asked to crawl across a congested intersection
on their hands and knees; the work critiqued
the submissiveness of the general public to
the autocratic rule of then-president Hosni
Mubarak, and was an ironic precursor to the
Arab Spring. Kenawy's performance entered
into life by taking place in the public realm.
Whilethis isquite literal, it is important to bear
in mind the basic semantic difference as well
as the potential risk and cost.

Operating in the political sphere

As much as art entering life can have a spatial
connotation, it can also possess a judicial and
governmental one as well. For many socially
engaged artists, there is a continued interest
in impact, and often the realm of the political
symbolizes these ambitions. Artist Laurie Jo
Reynoldss long-term project aims to challenge
and overturn harsh practices in Southern llli-
noiss Tamms Supermax Prison. Focusing on
the basic political injustice (as she sees it)
that this prison uses solitary confinement as
a condition of incarceration, and that Tamms
meets and exceeds the international definition
of torture, Reynolds organized Tamms Year
Ten, an all-volunteer coalition of prisoners, ex-
prisoners, prisoners' families, and concerned
citizens. Reynolds has labeled her efforts "leg-
islative art" which reflects the term coined
by Brazilian playwright Augusto Boals "leg-
islative theater." Borrowing from the work of

education theorist Paolo Freire, Augusto Boal
produced a new form of living theater in the
1960s whose entire mission was to assist in
the politicization and agency of Brazil's most
oppressed. In addition to inventing different
modes of theatricality that entered into daily
life, such as newspaper theater and invisible
theater, he developed a form of participatory
politics called "legislative theater" when he
was a city council member in Rio de Janeiro.

In a world of vast cultural production, the
arts have become an instructive space to gain
valuable skill sets in the techniques of perfor-
mativity, representation, aesthetics, and the
creation of affect. These skill sets are not sec-
ondary to the landscape of political production
but, in fact, necessary for its manifestation. If
the world is a stage (as both Shakespeare and
Guy Debord foretold), then every person on
the planet must learn the skill sets of theater.
The realm of the political may perhaps be the
most appropriate place for the arts, after all.

WHAT IS MEANT BY FORM?

"THE PUBLIC HAS
A FORM AND ANY
FORM CAN BE ART”

— Paul Ramirez Jonas

Just as video, painting, and clay are types of
forms, people coming together possess forms
as well. And while it is difficult to categorize
socially engaged art by discipline, we can
map various affinities based on methodolo-
gies. This includes the political issues they
address, such as sustainability, the environ¬
ment, education, housing, labor, gender, race,
colonialism, gentrification, immigration, incar¬
ceration, war, borders, and on and on.

Focusing on methodologies is also an
attempt to shift the conversation away from the
arts' typical lens of analysis: aesthetics. This
is not to say that the visual holds no place in
this work, but instead this approach emphasiz-

Opposite: Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Galzadiila placed twelve enormous pieces of chalk in the Plaza de Armas in Lima, mviting the public to write messages
on the surrounding pavement (Courtesy Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Galzadiila),

LIVING AS FORM

es the designated forms produced for impact.
By focusing on how a work approaches the
social, as opposed to simply what it looks like,
we can better calibrate a language to unpack
its numerous engagements.

Types of gatherings

Consider Please Love Austria: First Austrian
Coalition by the late artist Christoph Sch-
lingensief. For this work, he invited refugees
seeking political asylum to compete for either
a cash prize or a residency visa, granted
through marriage. He locked twelve partici-
pants in a shipping container, equipped with
a closed circuit television, for one week. Every
day, viewers would vote on their least favorite
refugees; two were banished from the contain¬
er and deported back to their native countries.
The container, placed outside the Vienna State
Opera House, sported blue flags representing
Austrias right-wing party, bearing a sign that
read, "Foreigners Out." It was clearly contro-
versial because the project used the tech-
nique of over-determ i nation to promote and
magnify the nascent xenophobia and racism
already existing in Austria. The project took
place in a public square, and provided both a
physical space for people to come together as
well as a mediated space for discussion. This
gathering of people wasn't what one would call
a space of consensus but one of deep discord
and frustration.

Types of media manipulation

I have previously discussed the manner in
which Women on Waves and Pedro Reyes used
the media as a critical element in their work.
One can add to this list most of the socially
engaged art in this book, including Bijari,
Rwanda Healing Project, the Yes Men, and
Mel Chin. As the realm of the political and the
realm of media become deeply intertwined,
media stunts become an increasingly impor¬
tant part of the realm of politics. This is true
for those resisting power and those enforcing
it. And it reflects a contemporary condition
wherein relationships with mediation are the
basic components by which political—and
thus social—decisions are made.

Research and its presentation

If politics have become performative, so too,
has knowledge—in other words, you have to
share what you know. Researchers and scien-
tists who feel a sense of political urgency to
disseminate their findings might use the skill
sets of symbolic manipulation and performa-
tivity in order to get their message out. Simi-
larly, we find numerous artists and collectives
who deploy aesthetic strategies to spread their
message. For example, Ala Plåsticas research-
based environmental activism focuses on the
damage caused when a Shell Oil tank col-
lided with another cargo ship in the Rio de la
Plata. Over 5,300 tons of oil spilled into this
major Argentine river. Using photographs and
drawings, and working with local residents to
conduct surveys, the collaborative deploys
techniques of socially engaged art in order to
bring this issue to light. One should also men-
tion the work of Decolonizing Architecture Art
Residency based in Beit Sahour, Palestine, a
group that aims to visualize the future re-use
of architecture in occupied territories. In plac-
es where war, migration, and mass atrocities
have become commonplace—such as Rwanda,
Beirut, and Palestine—it is not surprising that
many artists focus on archives as a way to doc-
ument histories now lost.

Structural alternatives

The "Do It Yourself" ethic, as it was termed in
the early 1990s, has gained cultural traction,
and has spread into the basic composition
of urban living. Experiments in alternatives—
whether the focus is food production, housing,
education, bicycling, or fashion—have become
a broad form of self-determined sociality. Once
just the modus operandi of anarchists at the
fringes of culture, the practice has now entered
the mainstream. The food movement, perhaps
inspired by increasing fear over genetically
modified organisms in food by large-scale cor-
porate agriculture and horror of cruel animal
slaughtering practices, has become an integral
element of many urban metropolises. Com¬
munity Sourced Agriculture (CSAs), guerrilla
community gardens, and the Slow Food move¬
ment, are all forms of new lived civic life that

Opposite: In Please Love Austria, Christoph Schlingensief locked 12 refugees seeking political asylum in a shipping container in front of the Vienna State Opera
House for one week, and left their fate up to the public. A sign on the container declaring, "Foreigners Out" referenced the pervasive racism‘in Austria. (Courtesy
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LIVING AS FORM

takes the work, literally, into one's own hands.

We also find pervasive growth in alterna¬
tive social programs occurring in response to
the evisceration of state-funded social pro¬
grams by various austerity measures. We find
numerous alternative economies and schools
at work as well. Fran lllich's Spacebank (2005)
is just one example of an alternative economy
aesthetic/form of living. Launched with just
50 Mexican pesos, Spacebank is both an actu-
al and conceptual online bank that offers real
investing opportunities, and loans to activists
and grassroots organizations. Similarly, Los
Angeles-based architect Fritz Haeg offered
free classes and workshops in his Sundown
Salons, which he held in his residence, a geo-
desic dome. I say "similarly" in so much as
these are two art world examples of tendencies
reflecting the urge toward a DIY aesthetic that
has prevailed for nearly twenty years.

Types of communicating

Asgroupparticipation increases, the basic skill
sets which accompany group process become
more useful. Isolated artists must focus on
speaking, while groups of people coming
together must focus on listening—the art of not
speaking but hearing. The Los Angeles-based
collective Ultra-red writes, "In asserting the
priority of organizing herein, Ultra-red, as so
often over the years, evokes the procedure so
thematic to investigation developed by [Bra-
zilian radical pedagogue] Paulo Freire." Grant
Kester has come up with the term "dialogic art"
to discuss such methods of art production that
emphasize conversation, and certainly many
artists privilege conversation as a mode of
action. In evoking Freire, Ultra-red also points
towards a form of education that must address
conditions of power as much as it does culture
and politics. The personal is not only politi-
cal but the interpersonal contains the seeds
of political conflict inherently. In reflecting on
his work with the sixteen-year-old experimen-
tal community housing project/art residency/
socially engaged Project Row Houses, Rick
Lowe stated in an interview with the New York
Times, "I was doing big, billboard-size paint-
ings and cutout sculptures dealing with social

issues, and one of the students told me that,
sure, the work reflected what was going on in
his community, but it wasn't what the com¬
munity needed. If I was an artist, he said, why
didn't I come up with some kind of Creative
solution to issues instead of just telling peo¬
ple like him what they already knew. That was
the defining moment that pushed me out of
the studio."

FORMS OF LIFE

Tania Bruguera's call to return Duchamp's uri-
nal to the restroom is a poignant, provocative
notion. For once it has been returned, what do
we call it? Art or life? Once art begins to look
like life, how are we to distinguish between the
two? When faced with such complex riddles,
often the best route is to rephrase the ques-
tion. Whether this work can be considered art
is a dated debate in the visual arts. I suggest
a more interesting question: If this work is not
art, then what are the methods we can use to
understand its effects, affects, and impact? In
raising these questions, I would like to quote
the former U.S. Defense Secretary responsible
for leading the United States into the Iraq War,
Donald Rumsfeld: "If you have a problem, make
it bigger." Rumsfelds adage has been taken
to heart as we begin to, hopefully, solve the
conundrum of art and life by aggregating proj-
ects from numerous disciplines whose mani-
festations in the world reflect a social ecosys-
tem of affinities. By introducing such a broad
array of approaches, the tensions nascent in
contemporary art exacerbate to the point of
rupture. The point is not to destroy the cate-
gory of art, but—straining against edges where
art blurs into the everyday—to take a snapshot
of cultural production at the beginning of the
21st century.

An important project that defies easy cate-
gorization is Lowes Project Row Houses. Situ-
ated in a low-income, predominately African-
American neighborhood in Houston's Northern
Third Ward, Project Row Houses was spurred
by the artist's interest in the art of John Big-
gers, who painted scenes of African-American
life in row house neighborhoods, as well as his
desire to make a profound, long-term commit-

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ment to a specific neighborhood. As the com¬
munity was on the verge of being demolished
by the City of Houston, the project began with
the purchase of several row houses, which
have been transformed into sites of local cul¬
tural participation as well as artist residencies.
Over the years, many artists have come and
gone, more hornes have been purchased, and
the row houses have undergone rehabilitation.
The project initiated a program for the neigh-
borhoods single mothers, providing childcare
and housing so that the mothers could attend
school. Project Row Houses has built trust
and strong relationships with the surrounding
neighborhood, offering a sustainable growth
model that is perfect for the neighborhood,
one created from the ground up.

Project Row Houses is a nonprofit organi-
zation initiated by an artist. If it can be included
as a socially engaged artwork, why not include
more nonprofit organizations as artworks as

well? Many artists and art collectives use a
broad range of bureaucratic and administrative
skills that typically lie in the domain of larger
institutions, such as marketing, fundraising,
grant writing, real estate development, invest-
ing in start-ups, city planning, and educational
programming. As opposed to assuming there
is an inherent difference between artist-initi-
ated projects and non-artist-initiated projects,

I have opted to simply include them all. Let us
call this the "cattle call" method. While it might
feel strange to include nonprofit art organiza¬
tions such as Cemeti Art House and Founda¬
tion in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, which has been
involved in post-earthquake cultural program¬
ming, or the work of the United Indian Health
Services located in Northern California, which
combines traditional cultural programming
with access to health care, consider what they
do, not who they say they are. Certainly these
projects are not specifically artworks, but their

Above: Artist Sam Durant contributed WeAre the People to Project Row Houses in 2003 (Courtesy Project Row Houses).

collaborative and participatory spirit, com¬
munity activism, and deployment of cultural
programming as part of their operations makes
their work appear close to some projects that
arise from an arts background. In fact, there
are thousands of other nonprofits whose work
could be considered and highlighted as well.

In an even greater stretch of the framework
of socially engaged art, some works have been
included in Living as Form that possess no sin-
gular author or organization. For example, the
celebrations in Harlem on the night of Barack
Obamas election were spontaneous eruptions
of joy and street parading in a community that
had long thought the election of a black presi¬
dent to be an impossibility. And, in a similar
vein, the protests that have erupted across
the Middle East—particularly those in Tunisia
and Egypt—have become models of spontane¬
ous popular action facilitated across dynamic
social networks with the collective desire to

contest power. Does this constitute art? Does
this constitute a civic action? Certainly some
questions are easier to answer than others.

This books title borrows from Harald Szee-
mann's landmark 1969 exhibition at Kunsthall
Bern, When Attitudes Become Form: Live in
Your Head, which featured artists including
Joseph Beuys, Barry Flanagan, Eva Hesse,
Jannis Kounellis, Walter de Maria, Robert
Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Lawrence Weiner,
introducing an array of artists whose concep-
tual works challenged the formal arrangements
of what constituted art at the time. The show
highlighted a diverse range of tendencies that
would later materialize as movements from
conceptual art, land art, Minimalism, and Arte
Povera. Writing on the exhibition, from Szee-
mann's catalog, Hans-Joachim Muller stated,
"For the first time, the importance of form
seemed to be questioned altogether by the
conceptualization of form: whatever has a cer-

Above. Artists from all over Indonesia took part in Cemeti Art House’s yearlong program, which revitalized the arts in areas traumatized by an earthguake
(Photograph by Dwi 'Oblo 1 Prasetyo, Courtesy Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia).

LIVING AS FORM

tain form can be measured, described, under-
stood, misunderstood. Forms can be criticized,
disintegrated, assembled." Such a break is in
the air again, but now accompanied by a keen
awareness that living itself exists in forms that
must be questioned, rearranged, mobilized,
and undone. For the first time, the importance
of forms of living seems to be questioned alto-
gether by the conceptualization of living as
form. Whatever has a certain form can be mea¬
sured, described, understood, misunderstood.
Forms of living can be criticized, disintegrated,
assembled.

PART II: NEOUBERALISM AND THE
RISE OF SPECTACULAR LIVING

Why does this book focus on the last twenty
years? Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,
a new neoliberal order has emerged. Loosely
defined, neoliberalism as a political order priv-
ileges free trade and open markets, resulting
in maximizing the role of the private sector in
determining priorities and deemphasizing the
role of the public and the state's function in
protecting and supporting them. This pro-cap-
italist governmentalism has radically shaped
the current geopolitical and social map. From
the global boosterism of the 1990s to the
subsequent hangover and contestation in the
2000s, this vast history includes the growth of
capitalism and free-market influence on inter¬
national governance; formation of the Euro¬
pean Union; genocide in Rwanda; the events
of September 11, 2001, and ensuing wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq; the bellicose efforts of
the Bush administration; and flexible labor in
the Western world where decentralized busi-
nesses hired and fired quickly, and tempo-
rary work became a more familiar way of life.
As these policies became commonplace, we
found a widespread exacerbation of nascent
race and class divisions. The prison industry
in the United States now booms, and the gap
between rich and poor increases. Widespread
protests in Europe and Latin America yielded
the term "precarity," which gained traction as
a description of social life always in jeopardy.
Austerity measures forced governments such

as Argentina, Spain, Greece, and Ireland to
eliminate their social welfare programs and
ignited protest movements. In Latin America,
new left governments emerged that redefined
the region's relationship to culture, capitalism,
and power.

The last twenty years were also accom¬
panied by a global growth of advertising in
a more media-rich world—from film to cable
television to the explosion of video games to
the rapid formation of the Internet and social
media. Using the same symbolic manipula-
tion and design methods that have long been
the bread and butter of artists, the growth of
"creative industries" were undeniably part of
the cultural landscape. While in the 1940s,
the Frankfurt School philosophers Adorno and
Horkheimer warned of an impending wave of
capitalist-produced culture that would sweep
across the world, the last twenty years has
seen that wave become a reality. Guy Debord
and the Situationists of Paris 1968 coined
the term "spectacle" to refer to the process
by which culture, expressions of a society's
self-understanding, is produced within the
capitalist machine. Typified by the image of
an audience at a cinema passively watching
television and film, the spectacle can be seen
as shorthand for a world condition wherein
images are made for the purpose of sales. Cer-
tainly when considered from the standpoint
of scale, the sheer amount of culture we as a
global community consume, as well as pro-
duce, indicates a radical break with our rela¬
tionship to cultures of past eras. Over the last
twenty years we find people forced to produce
new forms of action in order to account for this
radically altered playing fieId. We find a form
of activism and political action that is increas-
ingly media savvy. As opposed tothinking of a
war fought with only guns, tanks, and bodies,
wars were fought using cameras, the Internet,
and staged media stunts.

In 1994, on the same day that NAFTA was
signed into Office, the Zapatista EZLN Move-
ment emerged in the Southern jungles of the
Mexican province Chiapas. An indigenous
movement demanding autonomy and broad¬
casting its message via a ski mask-wearing.

LIVING AS FORM

pipe-smoking Subcommandante Marcos, the
Zapatistas were savvy in their early use of
cultural symbols and the Internet to rally the
international sympathies of the left to their
cause. There is no way to conceive of the pro¬
test in Seattle in 1999 as anything but inspired
by the Zapatistas' use of the carnivalesque,
poetics, the Internet, and social networking
culture. This is to say that over the last twenty
years, we have seen the integration of cultur¬
al manipulation into its most poignant social
movements and accompanying forms of activ-
ism. Certainly the antics of the Yes Men—who
poke fun at corporate power through their
numerous appearances on television and in
print media, posing as executives—is another
example of resistance manifesting itself in the
media-sphere via the manipulation of cultural
symbols.

With that in mind, itshould be said thatthis
present spectacular reality is simply the chess
board we, as people on the planet, must strate-
gically move across. However, the way in which
we choose to produce politics and meaning on
it yields different ethicaland political ramifica-
tions. The September ll th attack and destruc-
tion of the World Trade Center Towers by two
hijacked planes, and the subsequent media
hysteria, were clearly considered by their cre-
ators in terms of spectacle, not just casualties.
In reflecting on this spectacular political ter-
rain, the theoretical collective Retort wrote,
"One of the formative moments in the educa-
tion of Mohammad Atta, we are told, was when
he came to realize the conservation of Islamic
Cairo, in which he hoped to participate as a
newly trained town planner, was to obey the
logic of Disney World."

When considered within the framework of
socially engaged art, such events help make
sense of the media antics and performativity
of hallmark projects such as Women on Waves
and Palas PorPistolas. They, too, are meaning-
makers in an era of vast spectacle. The same
can be said of the aesthetic approaches to
research, its presentation, and engaging the
political terrain. Who needs to worry about
art, when all the world is literally a stage? So
rather than thinking of the last twenty years as

the "post-Cold War" era, we might think of it
as the moment in which the spectacle became
the increasing reality for not only culture-
makers, but all people. Reflecting on the fall
of the Berlin Wall, Guy Debord wrote, "This
driving of the spectacle toward modernization
and unification, together with all of the other
tendencies toward the simplification of soci¬
ety, what in 1989 led the Russian bureaucracy
suddenly, and as one man, to convert to the
current ideology of democracy—in other words,
to the dictatorial freedom of the market, as
tempered by the recognition of the rights of
homo spectator."

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the crum-
bling of the Soviet Union can also be seen
as a rise of the spectacle behind the veil of
democracy. And because the spectacle enjoys
its veils and illusions (as a creature of sym-
bolic production), perhaps it can be symbol-
ized by the mass-media phenomenon that we
have lived with for the last twenty years: real¬
ity television. The format started in 1992 with
the launch of MTV's The Real World, a suppos-
edly real-life drama about multicultural young
people living together, on camera, 24 hours
a day. The idea was greeted with paranoiac
Orwellian concerns of Big Brother (enjoyably
enough, the name of the inspiration for The
Real World launched in Britain), but over the
course of time, what was to stand out about
the show was that it not only predicted the
largest growth market in television program-
ming, but also foretold the Internets now-com-
monplace role in documenting everyday life.
Since 1991, contemporary life has become a
kind of schizophrenic existence, where we are
both on television as well as in the world. We
are both being mediated by things as well as
experiencing them.

Why mention this in a discussion of social¬
ly engaged art? Without understanding that
the manipulation of symbols has become a
method of production for the dominant powers
in contemporary society, we cannot appreciate
the forms of resistance to that power that come
from numerous artists, activists, and engaged
citizens. We find it in the rhetoric of urban
cultural economy guru Richard Florida whose

LIVING AS FORM

quick formulas on the Creative class have
been accepted and built on by major cities in
the United States. A pro-arts, pro-real estate
development advocate, Floridas quick fix to
economic woes explicitly draws a connection
between the arts and the global urban concern
of gentrification. While it is not the purview
of this book, one could easily write a differ¬
ent one based on the practices of the power-
ful as well. Take, for example, fast-food chain
McDonald s Ronald McDonald House. Here we
have a global corporation who offers, "essen-
tial medical, dental, and educational Services
to more than 150,000 children annually." We
can also see social programs initiated by most
major corporations of the United States as
well as the manipulation of cultural symbols
in media by right-wing political organizations
such as The Tea Party. Socially engaged art-
works, perversely enough, are not just the pur¬
view of artists, but, in fact, can additionally be
deployed by capitalists for the production of
their own version of meaning and advertising.

It is upon this stage of vast spectacle that
we must attempt to create meaningful relation-
ships and actions. And this is not easy. For as
the world of The Real World moves from a fic¬
tion to a reality, we find ourselves confused
by whether things are advertisements or what
they say they are. The artist Shepard Faireys
guerrilla wheatpaste poster campaigns across
the world have garnered not only great press
but also much cynicism as many in the street
art community accuse the work of being a cor-
porate-sponsored commercial enterprise. And
in an era in which the production of culture
is often used as an advertisement, artists too
can be guilty of projects wherein the produc¬
tion of art is simply advertising for the ultimate
product: themselves. Thus, similar laments
might be thrown at some of the work in Liv¬
ing as Form. Is an artist genuinely producing
a socially engaged artwork to help people, or
is it yet another career-climbing maneuver?

[ Does public art in a city serve its current resi-
dents, or does it operate as an advertisement
for future gentrification?

This paranoia of what cultural producers
actually want is an integral part of a global cul¬

ture caught in decades of spectacular produc¬
tion. It has radically altered not just the arts,
but politics in general. Paranoia is the binding
global ethos. With that freakish personality
trait in mind, many artists have had to recon-
figure their methods to account for this lack of
transparency. I would like to call this the strate-
gic turn, borrowing from French theorist Michel
de Certeaus terms the "tactical" and the "stra-
tegic"—notions that explore how aesthetics are
produced in space. If the tactical is a tempo-
rary, interventionist form of trespass, the stra-
tegic is the long-term investment in space.

Throughout the 1990s, the relational aes¬
thetics of contemporary art began to reveal
certain political limitations. By being discreet
and short-lived, the works often reflected a
convenient tendency for quick consumption
and exclusivity that garnered favor among
museums and galleries. When the artist Rirkrit
Tiravanija cooked Pad Thai in a Soho gallery,
the work was praised as a radical redefinition
of what constituted art. This simple maneu¬
ver was heralded by Nicholas Bourriaud as a
seminal project in the production of the genre
"relational aesthetics." Over time, many in
the activist art milieu viewed this kind of dis¬
creet performativity as simply digested by the
conditions of power. For some, there were too
many similarities between a VIP cocktail party
and the intimate personal experiences advo-
cated by much of the work gathered under
the heading of relational aesthetics. Similarly,
suspicions of the global biennial circuit arose;
artists who espoused supposed political ambi-
tion and content seemed to simply travel the
world trading in the symbolic culture of activ-
ism. To quote the artist, anarchist, and activist
Josh MacPhee, "I am tired of artists fetishizing
activist culture and showing it to the world as
though it were their invention."

Thus, the strategic turn where we find
works that are explicitly local, long-term, and
community-based. Rick Lowes Project Row
Houses is certainly an example, as is Lau-
rie Jo Reynoldss Tamms Year Ten campaign.
The organization Park Fiction combined the
efforts of numerous parties, including art¬
ists, musicians, filmmakers, and community

LIVING AS FORM

activists in order to produce a public park in
Hamburg by rallying the support and input of
numerous community members. What started
as a civic campaign in 1994 was finally real-
ized in 2005 after hundreds of meetings, argu-
ments, events, and exhibitions. These are
projects that are deeply rooted in community
relations and motivated by a commitment to
political change. They also gain community
traction by committing to an idea over time.
As publics become increasingly aware of the
hit-and-run style of not only artists, but other
industries of spectacle—such as advertising,
film, and television—they develop a suspicion
of those "helping them." As with many long¬
term efforts, the longer the project, the more
the artist or artists must behave like organiza-
tional structures in order to operate efficiently,
and combat fatigue and overextension.

At the time of this writing, the protests
and occupations of what are being called the
Arab Spring, the European Summer, and the
American Autumn are moving apace, catching
many governments and societies by surprise.
In consideration of the strategic turn by artists
and activists, wefind asimilar reflection in the
new social movements of the current period.
Whereas the protests of the alt-globalization
movement possessed a hit-and-run style
focusing on various gatherings by large gov-
ernmental and corporate bodies, including the
WTO (World Trade Organization), the GATT
(General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), the
G8 (Group of 8), the IMF (International Mone-
tary Fund), et al, the current occupation strat-
egies stay in one place over a longer period
of time.

GUTCHES IN THE FORMS

While the language for defining this work is
evolving, some criticisms and considerations
find their way into most discussions. A con-
stant battle (which is difficult to resolve) is
the matter of efficacy and pedagogy between
the symbolic, the mediated, and the practical.
When is a project working? What are its inten-
tions? Who is the intended audience? When is
an artist simply using the idea of social work in
order to progress her career? Are these social-

ly engaged works perhaps a little too sympa-
thetic with the prevailing values of our time
and, thus, make themselves vulnerable to state
instrumentalization? Again, socially engaged
art can easily be used as advertising for vast
structures of power, from governments to cor-
porations. Determining which forms of social
engagement truly lead towards social justice
is a constant source of debate. Knowing this,
in itself, is useful.

As art enters life, one must consider the
powerful role that affect plays in the produc-
tion of meaning. The concept of affect derives
from the understanding that how things make
one feel is substantively different than how
things make one think. As cultural production
is often geared towards emotive impact, under¬
standing how cultural projects function politi-
cally and socially would benefit from an under¬
standing of this poorly analyzed concept. In
addition, how these projects function and are
understood is as varied as the audiences they
impact. Unmooring this work from the strict
analysis of aesthetics should not only assist
in truly appreciating its complexities, but also
liberate the dialogue of aesthetics to include
knowledge sets of the global public. Mov¬
ing across racial, cultural, disciplinary, and
geographic boundaries provides a complex
public to consider. Obviously a person with
a contemporary art background appreciates
a socially engaged artwork differently than
someone who does not. But more important
than disciplinary-specific knowledge are the
vast differences in approach developed out of
geographic, racial, class, gender, and sexual-
ity differences. A form of analysis that can
account for this broad spectrum of difference
(while obviously difficult) will at least provide
aframework for interpreting social phenomena
from an honest position based in reality.

Socially engaged art may, in fact, be a mis-
nomer. Defying discursive boundaries, its very
flexible nature reflects an interest in produc-
ing effects and affects in the world ratherthan
focusing on the form itself. In doing so, this
work has produced new forms of living that
force a reconsideration and perhaps new lan¬
guage altogether. As navigating cultural sym-

UVINGASFORM

bols becomes a necessary skill set in basic
communication and pedagogy, let alone com¬
munity organizing, the lessons of theater, art,
architecture, and design have been incorpo-
rated in a complex array of social organizing
methodologies. Deep research, media cam-
paigns, dinners, conversations, performances,
and online networking are just a few of the
numerous techniques deployed in this strate-
gic and tactical playing field.

As Duchamp placed the urinal in the
museum at the beginning of the twentieth
century, perhaps it should be no surprise to
find artists returning it to the real at the dawn
of the twenty-first. This maneuver could easily
be interpreted as yet another art historical ref¬
erence. However, 1 suspect the more important
interpretation is that this maneuver reflects a
necessary recalibration of the cultural envi¬
ronment surrounding the world today. For, as
art enters life, the question that will motivate
people far more than What is art? is the much
more metaphysically relevant and pressing
What is life?

PARTKIPATION
WHERE

DSPECTACLE:
WENOW?

CLMRE

>ISHOP

1. SPECTACLE TODAY

One of the key words used in artists' self-
definitions of their socially engaged practice
is "spectacle," so often invoked as the entity
that participatory art opposes itself to, both
artistically and politically. When examin-
ing artists' motivations for turning to social
participation as a strategy in their work, one
repeatedly encounters the same claim: con-
temporary capitalism produces passive sub-
jects with very little agency or empowerment.
For many artists and curators on the left, Guy
Debords indictment of the alienating and
divisive effects of capitalism in The Society
of the Spectacle (1967) strike to the heart of
why participation is important as a project: it
re-humanizes a society rendered numb and
fragmented by the repressive instrumentality
of capitalist production. This position, with
more or less Marxist overtones, is put forward
by most advocates of socially engaged and
activist art. Given the market's near total satu-

ration of our image repertoire—so the argu¬
ment goes—artistic practice can no longer
revolve around the construction of objects to
be consumed by a passive bystander. Instead,
there must be an art of action, interfacing with
reality, taking steps—however small—to repair
the social bond. As the French philosopher
Jacques Ranciére points out, "the 'critique of
the spectacle' often remains the alpha and the
omega of the 'politics of art"'. 1

But what do we really mean by spectacle
in a visual art context? "Spectacle" has a par-
ticular, almost unique status within art history
and criticism, since it has an incomparable
political pedigree (thanks to the Situation-
ist International, or Sl) and directly raises the
question of visuality. As frequently used by art
historians and critics associated with the jour¬
nal October, spectacle denotes a wide range of
attributes: for Rosalind Krauss writing on the
late capitalist museum, it means the absence
of historical positioning and a capitulation to

Above: Eliasson addressed the ubiquitous subject of weather with his vast 2003 installation of The Weather Project in Date Modern's TUrbine Hall (Courtesy
Olafur Eliasson, neugerriemschneider, Berlin, and Thnya Bonakdar Gallery, New York).

LIVING AS FORM

pure presentness; for James Meyer, arguing
against Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project, it
denotes an overwhelming scale that dwarfs
viewers and eclipses the human body as a
point of reference; for Hal Foster writing on the
Bilbao Guggenheim, it denotes the triumph
of corporate branding; for Benjamin Buchloh
denouncing Bill Viola, it refers to an uncriti-
cal use of new technology. In short, spectacle
today connotes a wide range of ideas—from
size, scale, and sexiness to corporate invest¬
ment and populism. And yet, for Debord, "spec¬
tacle" does not describe the characteristics of
a work of art or architecture, but is a definition
of social relations under capitalism (but also
under totalitarian regimes). Individual sub-
jects experience society as atomized and frag-
mented because social experience is medi-
ated by images—either the "diffuse" images of
consumerism or the "concentrated" images of
the leader. As Debord s film, The Society of the
Spectacle (1971), makes clear, his arguments
stem from an anxiety about a nascent con-
sumer culture in the '60s, with its tidal wave
of seductive imagery. But the question as to
whether or not we still exist in a society of the
spectacle was posed by Baudrillard as early
as 1981, who dispatches not only Debord but
also Foucault in his essay "The Precession of
Simulacra":

We are witnessing the end of perspec-
tive and panoptic space... and hence
the very abolition of the spectacular....

We are no longer in the society of the
spectacle which the situationists talked
about, nor in the specific types of alien-
ation and repression which this implied.

The medium itself is no longer identifi-
able as such, and the merging of the
medium and the message (McLuhan) is
the first great formula of this new age. 2

More recently, Boris Groys has suggested
that in today's culture of self-exhibitionism (in
Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, which he pro-
vocatively compares to the text/image compo-
sitions of conceptual art) we have a "spectacle
without spectators":

the artist needs a spectator who can
overlook the immeasurable quantity of
artistic production and formulate an
aesthetic judgment that would single
out this particular artist from the mass
of other artists. Now, it is obvious that
such a spectator does not exist—it
could be God, but we have already been
informed of the fact that God is dead. 3

In other words, one of the central requirements
of art is that it is given to be seen, and reflect-
ed upon, by a spectator. Participatory art in
the strictest sense forecloses the traditional
idea of spectatorship and suggests a new
understanding of art without audiences, one
in which .everyone is a producer. At the same
time, the existence of an audience is inelim-
inable, since it is impossible for everyone in
the world to participate in every project.

2. HISTORY

Indeed, the dominant narrative of the history
of socially engaged, participatory art across
the twentieth century is one in which the acti-
vation of the audience is positioned against
its mythic counterpart, passive spectatorial
consumption. Participation thus forms part
of a larger narrative that traverses modernity:
"art must be directed against contemplation,
against spectatorship, against the passivity
of the masses paralyzed by the spectacle of
modem Life". 4 This desire to activate the audi¬
ence in participatory art is at the same time
a drive to emancipate it from a state of alien-
ation induced by the dominant ideological
order—be this consumer capitalism, totalitar¬
ian socialism, or military dictatorship. Begin-
ning from this premise, participatory art aims
to restore and realize a communal, collective
space of shared social engagement. But this
is achieved in different ways: either through
constructivist gestures of social impact, which
refute the injustice of the world by proposing
an alternative, or through a nihilist redoubling
of alienation, which negates the world's injus¬
tice and illogicality on its own terms. In both
instances, the work seeks to forge a collective,
co-authoring, participatory social body, but

Opposite : Democracyin America, a project that took place during the 2008 election season and explored artists 1 relationship with the American democratic tradi-
tion, included a seven-day exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City (Photograph by Meghan Mclnnis, Courtesy Creative Time).

PARTICIPATION AND SPECTACLE. WHERE ARE WE NOW?

one does this affirmatively (through utopian
realization), the other indirectly (through the
negation of negation).

For example, Futurism and Constructivism
both offered gestures of social impact and the
invention of a new public sphere—one geared
towards fascism, the other to reinforce a new
Bolshevik world order. Shortly after this peri-
od, Paris Dada "took to the streets" in order to
reach a wider audience, annexing the social
forms of the guided tour and the trial in order
to experiment with a more nihilistic type of
artistic practice in the public sphere. It is tell¬
ing that in the first phase of this orientation
towards the social, participation has no given
political alignment: it is a strategy that can be
equally associated with Italian Fascism, Bol¬
shevik communism, and an anarchic negation
of the political.

In the postwar period, we find a similar
range of participatory strategies, now more or
less tied to leftist politics, and culminating in
the theater of 1968. In Paris, the Sl developed
alternatives tovisual art inthe"deriveand con-
structed situation"; while the Groupe Recher-

che d'Art Visuel devised participatory actions,
both in the form of installations and street
environments. Both of these are affirmative in
tenor, but as a critique of consumer capitalism.
Jean-Jacques LebeTs anarchic and eroticized
Happenings provide a different model—"the
negation of negation"—in which the audience
and performers are further alienated from an
already alienating world, via disturbing and
transgressive activities that aimed to produce
a group mind or egregore. When these artistic
strategies were put into play in different ideo-
logical contexts (such as South America and
Eastern Europe), the aims and intentions of
participation yielded different meanings. In
Argentina, where a brutal, U.S.-backed military
dictatorship was imposed in 1966, it gave rise
to aggressive and fragmented modes of social
action, with an emphasis on class antagonism,
reification, and alienation. In Czechoslova-
kia, brought into line with Soviet "normaliza-
tion" after 1968, participatory art had a more
escapist tone, with avant-garde actions often
masquerading under vernacular forms (wed-
dings, parties, and festivals), often in remote

LIVING AS FORM

locations, in order to avoid detection by the
secret police. Art was disguised by life in order
to sustain itself as a place of nonalienation.
The work of Collective Actions Group (CAG),
active in Moscow from 1976 onwards, further
problematizes contemporary claims that par-
ticipation is synonymous with collectivism,
and thus inherently opposed to capitalism;
rather than reinforcing the collectivist dogma
of communism, CAG deployed participation as
a means to create a privatized sphere of indi¬
vidual expression.

Further analogies to contemporary social
practice can be found in the rise of the com¬
munity arts movement after 1968, whose his-
tory provides a cautionary tale for todays art-
ists averse to theorizing the artistic value of
their work. Emphasizing process rather than
end result, and basing their judgments on
ethical criteria (about how and whom they
work with) rather than on the character of their
artistic outcomes, the community arts move¬
ment found itself subject to manipulation—and
eventually instrumentalization—by the state.
From an agitational force campaigning for
social justice (in the early 1970s), it became
a harmless branch of the welfare state (by the
1980s): the kindly folk who can be relied upon
to mop up wherever the government wishes to
absolve itself of responsibility.

And so we find ourselves faced today with
an important sector of artists who renounce
the vocabularies of contemporary art, claiming
to be engaged in more serious, worldly, and
political issues. Such anti-aesthetic refusals
are not new: just as we have come to recognize
Dada cabaret, situationist détournement, or
dematerialized conceptual and performance
art as having their own aesthetics of produc-
tion and circulation, so too do the often form-
less-looking photo-documents of participato-
ry art have their own experiential regime. The
point is not to regard these anti-aesthetic phe-
nomena as objects of a new formalism (reading
areas, parades, demonstrations, discussions,
ubiquitous plywood platforms, endless pho-
tographs of people), but to analyze how these
contribute to the social and artistic experi-
ence being generated.

3. TWO CRITIQUES

One of the questions that is continually posed
to me is the following: Surely it is better for
one art project to improve one person's life
than for it not to happen at all? The history
of participatory art allows us to get critical
distance on this question, and to see it as
the latest instantiation of concerns that have
dogged this work from its inception: the ten-
sion between equality and quality, between
participation and spectatorship, and between
art and real life. These conflicts indicate that
social and artistic judgments do not easily
merge; indeed, they seem to demand differ¬
ent criteria. This impasse surfaces in every
printed debate and panel discussion on par¬
ticipatory and socially engaged art. For one
sector of artists, curators, and critics, a good
project appeases a superegoic injunction to
ameliorate society; if social agencies have
failed, then art is obliged to step in. In this
schema, judgments are based on a humanist
ethics, often inspired by Christianity. What
counts is to offer ameliorative Solutions, how-
ever short-term, rather than to expose con-
tradictory social truths. For another sector of
artists, curators, and critics, judgments are
based on a sensible response to the artists
work, both in and beyond its original context.
In this schema, ethics are nugatory, because
art is understood continually to throw estab-
lished systems of value into question, includ-
ing morality; devising new languages with
which to represent and question social con-
tradiction is more important. The social dis-
course accuses the artistic discourse of
amorality and inefficacy, because it is insuf-
ficient merely to reveal, reduplicate, or reflect
upon the world; what matters is social change.
The artistic discourse accuses the social dis¬
course of remaining stubbornly attached to
existing categories, and focusing on micropo-
litical gestures at the expense of sensuous
immediacy (as a potential locus of disalien-
ation). Either social conscience dominates, or
the rights of the individual to question social
conscience. Art's relationship to the social is
either underpinned by morality or it is under-
pinned by freedom. 5

PARTICIPATION AND SPECTACLE: WHERE ARE WE NOW?

This binary is echoed in Boltanski and
Chiapellos perceptive distinction of the dif-
ference between artistic and social critiques
of capitalism. The artistic critique, rooted in
nineteenth-century bohemianism, draws upon
two sources of indignation towards capitalism:
on the one hand, disenchantment and inau-
thenticity, and on the other, oppression. The
artistic critique, they explain, "foregrounds
the loss of meaning and, in particular, the loss
of the sense of what is beautiful and valu-
able, which derives from standardization and
generalized commodification, affecting not
only everyday objects but also artworks ... and
human beings." Against this state of affairs,
the artistic critique advocates "the freedom
of artists, their rejection of any contamina-
tion of aesthetics by ethics, their refusal of
any form of subjection in time and space and,
in its extreme form, any kind of work". 6 The
social critique, by contrast, draws on differ¬
ent sources of indignation towards capitalism:
the egoism of private interests, and the grow-
ing poverty of the working classes in a society
of unprecedented wealth. This social critique
necessarily rejects the moral neutrality, indi-
vidualism, and egotism of artists. The artistic
and the social critique are not directly com-
patible, Boltanski and Chiapello warn us, and
exist in continual tension with one another. 7

The clash between artistic and social cri¬
tiques recurs most visibly at certain historical
moments, and the reappearance of participa-
tory art is symptomatic of this clash. It tends
to occur at moments of political transition and
upheaval: in the years leading to Italian Fas-
cism, in the aftermath of the 1917 Revolution,
in the widespread social dissent that led to
1968, and its aftermath in the 1970s. At each
historical moment participatory art takes a dif¬
ferent form, because it seeks to negate differ¬
ent artistic and sociopolitical objects. In our
own times, its resurgence accompanies the
consequences of the collapse of communism
in 1989, the apparent absence of a viable left
alternative, the emergence of contemporary
"post-political" consensus, and the near total
marketization of art and education. 8 The Para¬
dox of this situation is that participation in

the West now has more to do with the popu-
list agendas of neoliberal governments. Even
though participatory artists stand against
neoliberal capitalism, the values they impute
to their work are understood formally (in terms
of opposing individualism and the commod-
ity object), without recognizing that so many
other aspects of this art practice dovetail even
more perfectly with neoliberalisms recent
forms (networks, mobility, project work, affec-
tive labor).

As this ground has shifted over the course
of the twentieth century, so the identity of par-
ticipants has been reimagined at each histori¬
cal moment: from a crowd (1910s), to the mass-
es (1920s), to the people (late 1960s/1970s),
to the excluded (1980s), to community
(1990s), to todays volunteers whose partici¬
pation is continuous with a culture of real-
ity television and social networking. From the
audiences perspective, we can chart this as
a shift from an audience that demands a role
(expressed as hostility towards avant-garde
artists who keep control of the proscenium),
to an audience that enjoys its subordination
to strange experiences devised forthem by an
artist, to an audience that is encouraged to be
a co-producer of the work (and who, occasion-
ally, can even get paid for this involvement).
This could be seen as a heroic narrative of the
increased activation and agency of the audi¬
ence, but we might also see it as a story of
their ever-increasing voluntary subordination
to the artists will, and of the commodification
of human bodies in a service economy (since
voluntary participation is also unpaid labor).

Arguably, this is a story that runs parallel
with the rocky fate of democracy itself, a term
to which participation has always been wed-
ded: from a demand for acknowledgement, to
representation, to the consensual consump-
tion of ones own image—be this in a work of
art, YouTube, Flickr, or reality TV. Consider
the media profile accorded to Anthony Gorm-
leys One and Other (2009), a project to allow
members of the public to continuously occupy
the empty "fourth plinth" of Trafalgar Square
in London, one hour at a time for one hun-
dred days. Gormley received 34,520 applica-

tions for 2,400 places, and the activities of the
plinths occupants were continually streamed
online. 9 Although the artist referred to One
and Other as "an open space of possibility for
many to test their sense of self and how they
might communicate this to a wider world," the
project was described by The Guardian, not
unfairly, as "Twitter Art." 10 In a world where
everyone can air their views to everyone we
are faced not with mass empowerment but
with an endless stream of banal egos. Far from
being oppositional to spectacle, participation
has now entirely merged with it.

This new proximity between spectacle and
participation underlines, for me, the neces-
sity of sustaining a tension between artistic
and social critiques. The most striking proj-
ects that constitute the history of participa-
tory art unseat all of the polarities on which
this discourse is founded (individual/collec-
tive, author/spectator, active/passive, real
life/art) but not with the goal of collapsing
them. In so doing, they hold the artistic and
social critiques in tension. Félix Guattaris

paradigm of transversality offers one such
way of thinking through these artistic opera-
tions: he leaves art as a category in its place,
but insists upon its constant flight into and
across other disciplines, putting both art and
the social into question, even while simulta-
neously reaffirming art as a universe of value.
Jacques Ranciére offers another: the aesthetic
regime is constitutively contradictory, shut-
tling between autonomy and heteronomy ("the
aesthetic experience is effective inasmuch as
it is the experience of that and" 11 ). He argues
that in art and education alike, there needs to
be a mediating object—a spectacle that stands
between the idea of the artist and the feeling
and interpretation of the spectator: "This spec¬
tacle is a third thing, to which both parts can
refer but which prevents any kind of 'equal' or
'undistorted' transmission. It is a mediation
between them. [...] The same thing which links
them must separate them." 12 In different ways,
Ranciére and Guattari offer alternative frame-
works for thinking the artistic and the social
simultaneously; for both, art and the social

Above: At the New Orleans Safehouse, Mel Chin and a panel of experts announce Operation Paydirt; New Orleans , a massive art and science project to take on
lead pollution in the city (Courtesy Fundred Dollar Bill Project).

PARTICIPATION AND SPECTACLE WHERE ARE WE NOW?

are not to be reconciled or collapsed, but sus-
tained in continualtension.

4. THE LADDER AND THE CONTAINER

I am interested in these theoretical models of
analysis because they do not reduce art to a
question of ethically good or bad examples,
nor do they forge a straightforward equation
between forms of democracy in art and forms of
democracy in society. Most of the contempo-
rary discourse on participatory art implies an
evaluative schema akin to that laid out in the
classic diagram "The Ladder of Participation,"
published in an architectural journal in 1969
to accompany an article about forms of Citi¬
zen involvement. 13 The ladder has eight rungs.
The bottom two indicate the least participatory
forms of Citizen engagement: the non-partici-
pation of mere presence in "manipulation" and
"therapy." The next three rungs are degrees
of tokenism—"informing," "consultation," and
"placation"—which gradually increase the
attention paid by power to the everyday voice.
At the top of the ladder we find "partnership,"
"delegated power/' and the ultimate goal, "Citi¬
zen control." The diagram provides a useful set
of distinctions for thinking about the claims
to participation made by those in power, and
is frequently cited by architects and planners.
It is tempting to make an equation (and many
have done so) between the value of a work of
art and the degree of participation it involves,
turning the Ladder of Participation into a gauge
for measuring the efficacy of artistic practice. 14

But whilethe Ladder provides us with help-
ful and nuanced differences between forms of
civic participation, it falls short of correspond-
ing to the complexity of artistic gestures. The
most challenging works of art do not follow
this schema, because models of democracy
in art do not have an intrinsic relationship to
models of democracy in society. The equation
is misleading and does not recognize arts abil-
ity to generate other, more paradoxical criteria.
The works I have discussed in the preceding
chapters do not offer anything like Citizen
control. The artist relies upon the participants'
Creative exploitation of the situation that he/
she offers, just as participants require the art¬

ist's cue and direction. This relationship is a
continual play of mutual tension, recognition,
and dependency—more akin to the collectively
negotiated dynamic of stand-up comedy, or to
BDSM sex, than to a ladder of progressively
more virtuous political forms.

A case study, now 11 years old, illustrates
this argument that art is both grounded in and
suspends reality, and does this via a mediating
object or third term: Please Love Austria (2000)
devised and largely performed by the German
filmmaker and artist Christoph Schlingensief
(1960-2010). Commissioned to produce a
work for the Weiner Festwochen, Schlingen¬
sief chose to respond directly to the recent
electoral success of the far-right nationalist
party led by Jorg Haider ( Freiheitliche Partei
Osterreichs, or FPO). The FPOs campaign had
included overtly xenophobic slogans and the
word uberfremdung (domination by foreign
influences), once employed by the Nazis, to
describe a country overrun with foreigners.
Schlingensief erected a shipping container
outside the Opera House in the center of
Vienna, topped with a large banner bearing
the phrase Auslander Raus (Foreigners Out).
Inside the container, Big Brother- style living
accommodations were installed for a group
of asylum-seekers, relocated from a detention
center outside the city. Their activities were
broadcast through the internet television sta-
tion webfreetv.com, and via this station view-
ers could vote daily for the ejection of their
least favorite refugee. At 8 p.m. each day, for
six days, the two most unpopular inhabitants
were sent back to the deportation center. The
winner was purportedly offered a cash prize
and the prospect—depending on the avail-
ability of volunteers—of Austrian citizenship
through marriage. The event is documented by
the Austrian filmmaker Paul Poet in an evoca-
tive and compelling ninety-minute film, Aus¬
lander Raus! Schlingensiefs Container (2002). ;

Please Love Austria is typical Schlin- I
gensief in its desire to antagonize the pub¬
lic and stage provocation. His early film work
frequently alluded to contemporary taboos: ;
mixing Nazism, obscenities, disabilities, and
assorted sexual perversions in films such as

LIVING AS FORM

8. CITIZEN CONTROL

7. DELEGATED POWER

6. PARTNERSHIP

5. PLACATION

4. CONSULTATION

3. INFORMING

2. THERAPY

1. MANIPULATION

c n

Åbove : Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation was onginally published in the July 1969 issue of the JournaJ of the American Institute of Planners (Courtesy
Sherry Arnstein). Opposite : The office of Thma Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International is located in the diverse neighborhood of Corona in Queens,
New York, and provides a space for outreach activities for the local immigrant community (Courtesy Tania Bruguera and Creative Time).

PARTICIPATION AND SPECTACLE. WHERE ARE WE NOW?

German Chainsaw Massacre (1990) and Ter¬
ror 2000 (1992), once described as "filth for
intellectuals." 15 In the late 1990s Schlingen-
sief began making interventions into public
space, including the formation of a political
party, Chance 2000 (1998-2000), which tar-
geted the unemployed, disabled, and other
recipients of welfare with the slogan "Vote For
Yourself." Chance2000 did not hesitate to use
the image of Schlingensiefs long-term col-
laborators, many of whom have mental and/or
physical handicaps. But in Please Love Aus¬
tria, Schlingensiefs refugee participants were
barely visible, disguised in assorted wigs, hats,
and sunglasses. 16 In the square, the public had
only a limited view of the immigrants through
peepholes; the bulk of the performance was
undertaken by Schlingensief himself, installed
on the container's roof beneath the "Foreigners
Out!" banner. Speaking through a megaphone,
he incited the FPO to come and remove the
banner (which they didn't), encouraged tour-

ists to take photographs, invited the public to
air their views, and made contradictory claims
("This is a performance! This is the absolute
truth!"), while parroting the most racist opin-
ionsand insults backtothecrowd. As thevari-
ous participants were evicted, Schlingensief
provided a running commentary to the mob
below: "It is a black man! Once again Austria
has evicted a darkie!"

Although in retrospect—and particularly
in Poets film—it is evident that the work is a
critique of xenophobia and its institutions, in
Vienna the event (and Schlingensiefs char-
ismatic role as circus master) was ambiguous
enough to receive approval and condemna-
tion from all sides of the political spectrum. An
elderly right-wing gentleman covered in med-
als gleefully found it to be in sympathy with
his own ideas, while others claimed that by
staging such a shameful spectacle Schlingen¬
sief himself was a dirty foreigner who ought
to be deported. Left-wing student activists

LIVING AS FORM

attempted to sabotage the container and "lib-
erate" the refugees, while assorted left-wing
celebrities showed up to support the project,
including Daniel Cohn-Bendit (a key figure
from May '68), and the Nobel Laureate author
Elfriede Jelinek (who wrote and performed a
puppet play with the asylum-seekers). In addi-
tion, large numbers of the public watched the
program on webfreetv.com and voted for the
eviction of particular refugees. The contain¬
er prompted arguments and discussion—in
the square surrounding it, in the print media,
and on national television. The vehemence
of response is palpable throughout the film,
no more so than when Poets camera pans
back from a heated argument to reveal the
entire square full of agitated people in intense
debate. One elderly woman was so infuriated
by the project that she could only spit at Sch-
lingensief the insult, "You ... artist!"

A frequently heard criticism of this work
is that it did not change anyones opinion:
the right-wing pensioner is still right-wing,
the lefty protestors are still lefty, and so on.
But this instrumentalized approach to critical
judgment misunderstands the artistic force of
Schlingensiefs intervention. The point is not
about "conversion," for this reduces the work
of art to a question of propaganda. Rather,
Schlingensiefs project draws attention to the
contradictions of political discourse in Austria
at that moment. The shocking fact is that Sch¬
lingensiefs container caused more public agi-
tation and distress than the presence of a real
deportation center a few miles outside Vienna.
The disturbing lesson of Please Love Austria
is that an artistic representation of detention
has more power to attract dissensus than an
actual institution of detention. 17 In fact, Sch¬
lingensiefs model of "undemocratic" behavior
corresponds precisely to "democracy" as prac-
ticed in reality. This contradiction is the core
of Schlingensiefs artistic efficacy—and it is
the reason why political conversion is not the
primary goal of art, why artistic representa-
tions continue to have a potency that can be
harnessed to disruptive ends, and why Please
Love Austria is not (and should never be seen
as) morally exemplary.

5. THE END OF PARTICIPATION

In his essay "The Uses of Democracy" (1992),
Jacques Ranciére notes that participation
in what we normally refer to as democratic
regimes is usually reduced to a question of
filling up the spaces left empty by power.
Genuine participation, he argues, is some-
thing different: the invention of an "unpredict-
able subject" who momentarily occupies the
street, the factory, or the museum—rather than
a fixed space of allocated participation whose
counter-power is dependent on the dominant
order. 18 Setting aside the problematic idea of
"genuine" participation (which takes us back to
modernist oppositions between authentic and
false culture), such a statement clearly pertains
to Please Love Austria , and the better examples
of social practice, which have frequently con-
stituted a critique of participatory art, rather
than upholding an unproblematized equation
between artistic and political inclusion.

The fact that the Ladder of Participation
culminates in "citizen control" is worth recall-
ing here. At a certain point, art has to hand
over to other institutions if social change is
to be achieved: it is not enough to keep pro-
ducing activist art. The historie avant-garde
was always positioned in relation to an exis-
tent party politics (primarily communist)
which removed the pressure of art ever being
required to effeetuate change in and of itself.
Later, the postwar avant-gardes claimed open-
endedness as a radical refusal of organized
politics—be this inter-war totalitarianism or
the dogma of a party line. There was the poten-
tial to discover the highest artistic intensity in
the everyday and the banal, which would serve
a larger project of equality and anti-elitism.
Since the 1990s, participatory art has often
asserted a connection between user-gener-
ated content and democracy, but the frequent
predictability of its results seem to be the
consequence of lacking both a social and an
artistic target; in other words, participatory
art today stands without relation to an exist-
ing political project (only to a loosely defined
anti-capitalism) and presents itself as opposi- .
tional to visual art by trying to side-step the
question of visuality. As a consequence, these

PARTICIPATION AND SPECTACLE; WHERE ARE WE NOW?

artists have internalized a huge amount of
pressure to bear the burden of devising new
models of social and political organization—a
task that they are not always best equipped
to undertake.

My point, again, is not to criticize specific
artists but to see the whole rise of social prac-
tice since 1989 as symptomatic. That the "polit¬
ical" and "critical" have become shibboleths of
advanced art signals a lack of faith both in the
intrinsic value of art as a de-alienating human
endeavor (since art today is so intertwined
with market systems globally) and in demo-
cratic political processes (in whose name so
many injustices and barbarities are conduct-
ed). 19 But rather than addressing this loss of
faith by collapsing art and ethics together, the
task today is to produce a viable international
alignment of leftist political movements and
a reassertion of art's inventive forms of nega-
tion as valuable in their own right. 20 We need to
recognize art as a form of experimental activ-
ity overlapping with the world, whose negativ-
ity may lend support towards a political proj-
ect (without bearing the sole responsibility
for devising and implementing it), and—more
radically—we need to support the progressive
transformation of existing institutions through
the transversal encroachment of ideas whose
boldness is related to (and at times greater
than) that of artistic imagination. 21

By using people as a medium, participa-
tory art has always had a double ontological
status: it is both an event in the world, and also
at a remove from it. As such, it has the capacity
to communicate on two levels—to participants
and to spectators—the paradoxes that are
repressed in everyday discourse, and to elicit
perverse, disturbing, and pleasurable experi-
ences that enlarge our capacity to imagine the
world and our relations anew. But to reach the
second level requires a mediating third term—
an object, image, story, film, even a spec-
tacle—that permits this experience to have a
purchase on the public imaginary. Participa-
tory art is not a privileged political medium,
nor a ready-made solution to a society of the
spectacle, but is as uncertain and precarious
as democracy itself; neither are legitimated in

advance but need continually to be performed
and tested in every specific context.

ENDNOTES

1 Jacques Ranciére, "Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community: Scenes from the
Aesthetic Regime of Art," Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods,
Vol. 2, No. 1, Summer 2008: 7.

2 Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra," in Simulations, trans. Paul Foss,

Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman (NewYork: Semiotext(e), 1983): 54.

3 Boris Groys, "Comrades of Time,” e-flux journal, December 11, 2009, available at
www.e-flux.com

4 Bons Groys, "Comrades of Time," e-flux journal, December 11, 2009, available at
www.e-flux.com Gast accessed September 3, 2010).

5 Tony Bennett phrases the same problem differently: art history as a bourgeois, idealist
discipline is in permanent conflict with Marxism as an anti-bourgeois, materialist
revolution in existing disciplines. There is no possibility of reconciling the two, See
Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism (London: Methuen, 1979): 80-5.

6 Lue Boltanski and Éve Chiapello, The New Spirit ofCapitalism (London: Verso,
2005): 37-8.

7 The implication of Boltanski and Chiapello‘s book is that in the third spirit of capitaligm,
the artistic critique has held sway, resulting in an unsupervised capitalism that lacks
the "invisible hand" of constraint that would guarantee protection, security and nghts
for workers.

8 For a clear summary of "post-politics" see Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neo-
liberal Fanta sies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009): 13. She presents
two positions: "post-politics as an ideal of consensus, inclusion, and administration
that must be rejeeted" (Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Ranciére) and "post-politics as a
description of the contemporary exelusion or foreclosure of the political" (Slavoj Zizek).

9 The difference between Gormley's webstreaming and that of Christoph Schlingensief
(discussed below) is that the latter is a conscious parody of reality TV's banality,
while the former uneritieally replicates it. A press shot of Gormley with American Idol.

10 Anthony Gormley, www.oneandother.co.uk Gast accessed August 23, 2010).

Charlotte Higgins, "The Birth of Twitter Art," Guardian, July 8, 2009, available at
www.guardian.co.uk Gast accessed 25 August 2010).

11 Jacques Ranciére, "The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes: Employments of
Autonomy and Heteronomy," NewLeft Review, 14, March-April 2002: 133.

12 Ranciére, "Emancipated Spectator," leeture m Frankfurt.

13 Sherry Arnstein, "A Ladder of Citizen Participation, "Journal of the American Institute
ofPlanners, 35:4, July 1969: 216-24. The diagram has recently been the subjeet of
some historical reassessment among architects and planners, reflecting the
renewed interest in participation in this sector.

14 See, for example, Dave Beech’s distinetion between participation and collaboration.
For Beech, participants are subjeet to the parameters of the artist's projeet, while
collaboration involves co-authorship and decisions over key structural features of
the work; "collaborators have rights that are withheld from participants." (Beech,
"lnclude Me Out," Art Monthly, April 2008: 3.) Although I would agree with his
definitions, I would not translate them into a binding set of value judgements to be
apphed to works of art.

15 Herbert Achternbusch, citedm Marion Lohndorf, “Christoph Schlingensief,"
Kunstforum, 142, October 1998: 94-101, available atwww.schlingensief.com
Gast accessed December 4, 2008).

16 During their evictions, the asylum-seekers covered their faces with a newspaper,
invertmg the celebratory, attention-seeking exits of contestants from the Big Brother
house. Rather than viewing this absence of identity as an assault on their subjeetivity,
we could see this as an artistic device to allow the asylum-seekers to be catalysts
for discussion around immigration in general (rather than individual case studies for
emotive journalism).

17 Silvija Jestrovic has explamed this preference for the performance of asylum rather
than its reality by way of reference to Debord's Society of the Spectacle, speeifieally
the epigraph by Feuerbach with which it opens: "But certainly for the present age,
which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation
to reality, the appearance to essence ... illusion o nly is saered, truthpro/ane."

(Silvija Jestrovic, "Ferforming Like an Asylum Seeker: Paradoxes of Hyper-Authenticity
in Schlingensief' s Please Love Austria," in Claire Bishop and Silvia Tramontana,
eds., Double Agent (London: 1CA, 2009): 61.

18 Ranciére argues that participation in democracy is a "mongrel" idea deriving from
the conflation of two ideas: "the reformist idea of necessary mediations between the
centre and the penphery, and the revolutionary idea of the permanent involvement
of citizen-subjects in every domain". (Jacques Ranciére, "The Uses of Democracy",
in Ranciére, Qn the Shores of Politics (London: Verso, 2007): 60.

19 The Slovenian collective 1RWIN has recently suggested that "critical" and "political"
art are as necessary to neohberalism as socialist realism was to the Soviet regime.

20 A positive example of new developments is the new left organization Krytyka Polityczna
in Poland, a publishing house that prodUces a magazine, organizes events, and
maintains a regular, forceful presence in the media (via its charismatic young leader
Slawomir Sierakowski). The artists who have affiliated themselves with this projeet
are as varied as Artur Mijewski and the painter Wilhelm Sasnal.

21 Latin America has been pre-eminent in mstituting such Solutions. See for example
the imtiatives introduced by Antanas Mockus, then-mayor of Bogotå, discussed

in Maria Cristina Caballero, "Academic turns city into a social expenment," Harvard
University Cazette, March 11,2004, available at http://www.news.harvard.edu.

\ ' IN ■ AS FORM

REIURNING ON BIKEK
HOIES ON SOOAL PRACIKE

MARIA UND

RETURNING ON BIKK: NOTK ON SOCIAL PRACTICE

If you were in Munster, Germany, in summer
1997, near the circular promenade, you likely
bumped into people on red bikes, cycling in
reverse. Early in the summer it would probably
have been a tall young woman and, later on, a
group heading down the asphalt trail. Perhaps
you even joined them in this unusual activity,
pedaling backward on a bicycle that was per-
fectly ordinary apart from its rear mirror, sta-
bilizer, and extra cogwheels. Riding it required
leaving your safety zone to unlearn the most
commonplace skill that you probably learned
as a child, in order to see the world from an
unusual perspective.

This cycle club was Elin Wikstroms Retur-
nity, produced for Munsters Skulptur Projek-
te, a high-profile exhibition—international in
scope—that marks arts postwar move beyond
the walls of the art institution. Skulptur Pro-
jekte has occurred every ten years since 1977,
filling Munster with both permanent and tem¬
po rary projects that have peppered the city,
primarily outdoors, with public sculpture. How-
ever, Returnity was unusually non-sculptural
within the history and focus of the exhibition...
it left no physical trace. 1 Instead, Wikstroms
cycle club, based on the voluntary participa-
tion of exhibition visitors as well as passersby,
contributed to the legacy of what is now called
"social practice," making an immaterial mark
within and beyond the traditional parameters
of "contemporary art."

The project did include physical elements,
such as the nine bicycles and a circular club-
house with an adjacent training track where
return cyclists could congregate. But most
significant was the number of cyclists, which
Wikstrom recorded carefully, as per her prac¬
tice of combining qualitative with pseudo-
bureaucratic, quantitative information. With
the help of another artist, Anna Brag, and an
assistant, she provided individual instructions
to two thousand people who attempted to ride
the bikes. Approximately fifty became repeat
participants. Some visitors even purchased
a Returnity kit containing parts that could be
mounted onto their own bikes at home.

It was no coincidence that this experi-
ment with bikes took place in Munster: a city

of universities which grew around a medieval
plan wherein driving a car is a nuisance. As
a result, every inhabitant owns, statistically,
two and a half bikes. Furthermore, in 1997, the
average German was a member of no less than
six to eight associations or clubs. Returnity
alluded to local mobility patterns and social
forms of organization, proving that an artwork
can actually form a community (albeit tempo-
rarily) instead of simply "reaching out" to an
existing one. The artist devised a framework
within which participants could maneuver
either individually or collectively, take part in
a behavioral experiment, and—more existen-
tially and ideologically than politically—raise
consciousness. Returnity was a playful test
that referenced lifelong learning, connectivity
in a globalized world, and radically rethinking
and deliberately disorienting ones naturalized
behaviors. 2

Arguably, Returnity was just another art
project based on the social—on interaction
between people—which provided an entertain-
ing activity for locals and visitors alike. After
all, it was commissioned by a body with inter-
est in using art as an instrument to brand the
city, generate income, and create new jobs.
However, Returnity also occurred in a moment
when social practice began to be simultane-
ously acknowledged and instrumentalized in
various forms of mainstream exhibitions and
other curated projects. Occasional precedents
such as Projet Unité in Firminy, France (1993-
94) , 3 Sonsbeek (1993) 4 in Arnhem, Germany,
Places with A Past at the Spoleto Festival in
Charleston, South Carolina (1991), 5 and Cul-
ture in Action in Chicago (1992-93) 6 in the
United States paved the way by focusing on
site-specific commissions. Many of these can
be described as social practice as we know it
today.

A little-known curatorial project that
stands out as a sensitive and smart predic-
tor of things to come was Services (1993),
initiated by artist Andrea Fraser and curator
Helmut Draxler at the Kunstraum at the Uni¬
versity of Luneburg. 7 Services was an activ-
ist and discursive project responding to the
fact that artists were increasingly asked to

RETURNING ON BIKES NOTES ON SOCIAL PRACTICE

provide new work for specific situations, i.e.
"projects," often with little or no pay, ensuing
censorship, and unclear rights to the works.
An ongoing forum, meetings, and an exhibi-
tion called "working-group exhibition" formed
the core of the project in which artists such as
Mark Dion, Louise Lawler, and Group Material
participated. In addition to questioning arts
function as a service, Services criticized art
institutions' conservative views on the nature
of exhibitions.

Even a quick glance reveals that social
practice is as kaleidoscopic as it is contested
as an artistic movement: it is simultaneously
a medium, a method, and a genre. As a term,
social practice can encompass everything
from community art and activism - å la the Art
Workers Coalition 8 - to so-called relational

aesthetics 9 and kontextkunst. 10 In between lie
new genre public art 11 and connective aesthet¬
ics 12 , dialogical art 13 and participatory practic-
es, 14 as well as hybrids cutting across attempt-
ed definitions. 15 They all look, taste, smell, and
sound very different from one another. And
yet social practice can loosely be described
as art that involves more people than objects,
whose horizon is social and political change—
some would even claim that it is about making
another world possible. Social practice con-
cerns works with multiple faces turned in dif¬
ferent directions—towards specific groups of
people, political questions, policy problems,
or artistic concerns; there is an aesthetic
to organization, a composition to meetings,
and choreography to events, as well as a lot
of hands-on work with people. At the core of
social practice is the urge to reformulate the
traditional relationship between the work and
the viewer, between production and consump-
tion, sender and receiver. Furthermore, social
practice tends to feel more at home outside tra¬
ditional art institutions, though is not entirely
foreign to them. Another way of phrasing this
is to talk in terms of the collaborative turn in
art—the genre as an umbrella for various meth-
ods such as collective work, cooperation, and
collaboration. 16

The development of social practice can
also be understood in light of simultaneous

transformations within politics and manage¬
ment. Just as the dematerialization of the art
object accompanied the dissolution of eco-
nomic value through the end of the gold stan¬
dard, artists also instrumentalized and reflect-
ed upon new forms of labor in the Western
world post-World War II. Now, artists involved
with social practice face the challenge of
changing working conditions in a deregu-
lated, post-Fordist job market, affected by an
economy radically restructured by financial
speculation and abstract values. In service
and knowledge sectors, social competence,
teamwork, and collaboration are essential, as
are self-organization, flexibility and creativ-
ity, which all belong to the repertoire of the
Romantic artist. In this sense, social practice
work is very close to todays ideal of entrepre-
neurial work. Meanwhile, non-governmental
organizations, interventions, and other sup¬
port structures in the decolonized, developing
world have engendered a volunteer sector. In
all of this, participation has become a neces-
sary and valued form of engagement, cher-
ished by neoliberalism and Third Way politics
alike. 17 Architecture shares this thrust towards
participation by underlining methods of par¬
ticipatory Consulting and decision-making. In
addition, as Western societies become more
and more precarious, techniques such as
these, used in the developing world, are now
applied to projects at home. 18

The invitation from Creative Time to write
this text prompted me to reflect on what it has
meant to engage with social practice work as
a curator, for the past two decades—not with
the intention of privileging this work over oth- ■
er artistic media, methods, or genres—at least
not consciously. Rather, l've been interested in
projects that relate to the surrounding world,
practices that offer the most pertinent and
challenging responses to moments, places,
and issues, presented by artists I have worked
with over time. These responses—both direct
and oblique, poetic and agitprop—have had a
place in my work alongside documentary, dis-
cursive, performative, and spatial practices, as
well as abstraction's many incarnations.

An enduring criticism of social practice

Opposite: Part of Services was a workshop organized by Fraser and Drexler at the Kunstraum der Universitåt Liineburg in early 1994 that allowed the artists and
curators involved to develop a framework for their practices and address the socioeconomic conditions of artists. The Services exhibition mainly consisted of col-
lected histoncal and contemporary documents that supported the workshop’s conclusions. (Courtesy Michael Schindel and Kunstraum der Universitåt Luneburg)

LIVING AS FORM

is that it lends to "touch-down" projects that
intervene only temporarily in a given situa-
tion—not unlike catastrophe relief. But some
short-term, commissioned projects have also
yielded long-term efforts. Suggestion for the
Day by Apolonija Sustersic 19 began as part
of a exhibition I curated in 2000 at Stock¬
holm^ Moderna Museet, titled What If: Art on
the Verge of Architecture and Design, which
continued for four years with the support of
various art and architecture institutions, such
as laspis in Stockholm and the Architecture
Museum of Ljubljana. Sustersic, trained as
both an architect and artist, invited stakehold-
ers in urban development and institutional pol-
itics to join in a conversation about the future
of Stockholm, a city known for its conservative
urban and architectural approach. Like Wik-
strom, Sustersic stimulated public engage-
ment by providing bicycles for the duration of
the exhibition. Participants also received maps
with commentary from emerging architects
about contested areas in the citys layout and
design, and postcards with images of those
sites so that visitors could locate them, pedal
to them, and view the issues firsthand. Part
of the debate on which the exhibitions theme
was based was the fact that Moderna Museet
itself is located on an island, removed from
the urban fabric. Sustersic then organized a
closed, moderated discussion within the exhi¬
bition space among commenting architects,
city planners, developers, and two prominent
local politicians—representatives who don't
normally encounter (let alone talk to) one
another about urban issues. The audience mix
resulted in lively, productive exchanges which
could only have occurred within the context
of art, primarily because such a diverse group
would never have agreed to meet outside of
a nonpolitical context. Eventually, the debate
focused on the harbor area and its prospected
extension.

Moderna Museets staff initially resisted
Suggestion for the Day for pragmatic reasons:
they simply weren't accustomed to working
with living artists, or organizing the production
of new work. Another reservation often heard
in relation to social practice is that opportuni-

ties for direct feedback are limited, outside of
the comments generated by the participants—
how then should the project be assessed?
But even if bigger museums were hesitant to
take on social practice projects, at least within
their main venues, by year 2000, this kind of
work had become a common component of
most biennials. This proved especially true in
shows that took place outside of the Western
world, such as Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, the
Periferic Biennial in lasi, and the Taipei Bien-
nial. Meanwhile, artists themselves, as well as
other non-institutional representatives, began
organizing their own initiatives—often long¬
term, relationship-building efforts designed to
contribute significantly to a particular context:
Park Fiction in Hamburg, a multi-year cam-
paign to transform an empty lot planned for an
office development into a public park, as well
as Dan Petermans Blackstone Bicycte Works,
ayouth education bike shop in Chicago, come
to mind.

Sustained engagement also characterized
Germany-based Schleuser.net (1998-2007).
The word "Schleuser" means to transfer or take
something through a hindrance like a lock or a
border. 20 To that end, Schleuser.net, with art¬
ists Farida Heuck, Ralf Homann and Manuela
Unverdorben at the heim, focused on border
regimes. In 1993, the famous "Budapest Trial"
criminalized "escape aid," helping people flee
the Eastern Bloc, which had previously been
considered a venerable activity, post-WWII.
21 Since then, migration had become a con-
troversial issue in German politics on a local,
regional, and national level, as well as across
Europe. Modeled after a lobbying organization,
Schleuser.net aimed to improve the media por-
trayal of "the men and women who engage in
undocumented cross-border traffic."

With the help of a realistic fiction, Schle-
user.net set up an office, organized events,
and displayed promotional material, including
brochures and gadgets, in various locations,
including a municipal administration building.
They also employed billboards and exhibitions
to communicate their message. The bland, cor-
porate-looking, orange and blue design of their
printed matter and website could easily be

SCHLEUSER

Trade Association for Smuggling People

confused with that of a proper pressure group.
This was not by chance: coming out of the
German radical Left— Homann co-organized
the pioneering "Freie Klasse" (Free Class) at
the Munich Academy in the late 1980s—Sche-
luser.net participated in the widespread theat-
ricalization of activism, while also consciously
evoking play and parody. 22 (Another related
initiative that Homann co-founded was the
activist project Kein Mensch Ist Illegal, or No
One Is Illegal, which, since 1997, has fought
for equal rights, regardless of whether or not
the persons in question possess legal papers.)

When Schleuser.net was invited to par-
ticipate in the group exhibition Exchange &
Transform (Arbeitstitel), which I curated at
Munich's Kunstverein Munchen (2002), it was
important to offer the group time and space to
carry on their work in a concentrated way. 23
They moved their computers, phones, and files
to the exhibition space, furnishing it with the
elements of artist duo Bik van der Pols Lobby

Copy. Triggered by the Kunstverein's unique
location between the historie Hofgarten and
the local government building, Schneuser.net
produced new promotional material, and orga-
nized a month-long series of leetures which
targeted politicians and journalists employing
incorrect data related to undoeumented border
Crossing. One of the leetures was a hands-on
presentation by artist Heath Bunting about
how to cross European borders without being
doeumented. In another, historian Anne Klein
presented her research on the Emergency Res-
cue Committee, which in 1940-42 smuggled
and saved more than two thousand people
from the south of France. Among the rescued
were philosopher Hannah Arendt and artist
Mare Chagall. 24

If Suggestion for the Day indicated an
interest in institutional dilemmas and urban
issues, and Schleuser.net exemplified collec-
tive endeavors as well as sustained engage-
ment—all increasingly important features of

Above ; Founded by a group of German artists, Schleuser.net maintained the appearance of a think tank with its bland corporate logo (Courtesy Bundesverband
Schleppen und Schleusen).

LIVING AS FORM

social practice—the Lost Highway Expedition
(2006) testifies to the art worlcTs intensified
focus on research-based practices and trans-
versal collaborations. However, these days,
research does not necessarily occur in iso-
lation, obscure archives, or remote libraries.
I nstead, like a flash mob with a clear purpose—
to reframe "balkanization" as a window to
Europe's future, rather than as an archaic and
violent memory of its past—the Lost Highway
Expedition explored for one month the never
completed "Brotherhood and Unity Highway"
in ex-Yugoslavia. The expedition alsoventured
to Albania.

Initiated by the architects Stealth and
Kyong Park and the artist Marjetica Potrc, the
Lost Highway Expedition brought nearly three
hundred artists, architects, geographers, crit-
ics, and curators to cities along the route of
the "Lost Highway" for events hosted by local
organizations pertaining to recent urbaniza-
tion, community politics, and cultural activi¬
ties. The trip itself was entirely self-organized,
with peopletraveling by car, bus,train, or bike—
according to preference and budget. No one
was required to commit to the entire journey,
although some did. Having worked with Stealth
in other contexts, I simply joined them at the
first two stops in Ljubljana and Zagreb with my
ten-month-old son, opting to take the train as
our means of transportation. The expedition
culminated in a host of projects, such as the
creation of art works, texts, conferences, publi-
cations, collaborations, and networks. Among
them are artist Kasper Akhojs Abstracta,
which relates the geopolitically fascinating
story of a flexible display system common in
Yugoslavia, as well as the publication of the
Lost Highway Expedition: Photobook. 25

The desire and need to work long-term is
felt in many corners of the art world, includ-
ing social practice. 26 To that end, Time/Bank,
by Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, was
designed to operate indefinitely. Based on the
classical structure of a nineteenth-century
time bank in which units of time are used as
currency, this contemporary version allows
individuals and groups to pool and trade skills.
Different from potlatch and barter, where

goods and Services are exchanged directly,
Time/Bank uses an alternate currency, in the
fashion of the "Ithaca HOUR" which has been
traded in Ithaca, New York, since 1991. So far,
Time/Bank has primarily concentrated on art
world networks; consequently, many of the
Services on offer relate to what cultural pro-
ducers do and need. Aranda and Vidokle have
opened branches in physical spaces in Basel,
den Hague and Frankfurt, accompanied by
shops with objects for sale, including bicycles.
They asked a number of artists to design pro-
totypes for actual tender, and chose Lawrence
Weiners bill for printing. 27

As the director of Tensta Konsthall, I have
invited Vidokle and Aranda to establish a
branch of Time/Bank in Tensta, a suburb of
Stockholm with approximately twenty thou-
sand inhabitants. It is a geographically dis-
tinct neighborhood built in the late 1960s as
part of a large late-Modernist housing scheme
that was implemented across Sweden. Today,
Tensta is a bedroom community with the most
diverse concentration of nationalities in the
country; because of this, many local business
owners are already familiar with parallel econ-
omies. Tensta's unemployment rate is high and
the average income low. Along with the senior
high school, one of the best in the Capital, and
the local library, Tensta Konsthall serves as
a rare stable entity in an otherwise transient
area. The challenge here will be to sustain
Time/Bank in this wide, yet tight, community
where money has a different urgency.

Since the days of Returnity, social prac¬
tice has developed its own unique gestures
and orthodoxies, tensions and contradictions.
In fact, a plethora of new education programs
exclusively explore social practice. 28 Bringing
the field into light now is neither to crown the
genre "king of art," nor to establish a cross-
genre alternative canon. Rather, it is to con-
sider projects and practices that do something
significant in the moment, in palpable and/or
symbolic ways, within a specific set of circum-
stances. It is obvious that not all social practice
projects are interesting and relevant, just as all
painting is not uninteresting and irrelevant.
And yet, in spite of its increasing visibility.

Opposite, top to bottom : Lost Highway Expedition visited the unfinished Museum of the Revolution and first residential towers built in New Belgrade after World War
II. A partially constructed mosque m the Shuto Orizari part of Skopje, Macedonia was abandoned due to lack of funds and the conversion of large parts of the com¬
munity to Evangelical Christianity (Photographs by Kyong Park)

I.mi— I.

RETURNING ON BIKES-. NOTES ON SOCIAL PRACTICE

social practice still mainly operates within the
"minor" strands of the art world—as opposed
to the spectacularized and consumption-ori-
ented mainstream institutions of the "major"
strand. These minors are self-organized ini-
tiatives, artistic and otherwise, as well as
small-scale public institutions with precarious
economies and they are the source of most of
the new ideas in art. 29 Sharing certain features
with Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's "minor
literature," written by members of a minority
but using and corrupting the language of the
majority (like Franz Kafka) in order to maintain
maximum self-determination, the minors of the
art world keep a calculated distance from the
"majors." 30

Being slightly off-center can indeed often
be an advantage. Today the minors, in general,
and social practice, in particular, benefit from
not yet having been subsumed by the majors.
This is encouraging, as the work then can still
offer the possibility of avoiding preconcep-
tions about art production and direction, even
if only for a moment. The questioning is ongo-
ing, the process is rolling, and I keep waiting to
one day see someone cycling down the street
pedaling forwards, but going backwards.

ENDNOTES

1 Contemporary Sculpture: Projects m Miinster 1997, Klaus Bussmann, Kasper
Konig, Florian Matzner, eds. (Ostfildern-Ruit: Verlag CerdHatje, 1997).

2 "Returmty, * text by Elin Wikstrom in Moderna Museet Projekt: Elin Wikstrom,

Mana Lind, ed. (Stockholm: Modem Museet, 2000).

3 Exhibition catalogue: Yves Aupetitallot, Projet Unité, (E.C.A. Brighton), 3 vol., 1993.

4 Exhibition catalogue for Sonsbeek 1993 , Arnhem, curated by Valerie Smith.

5 Exhibition catalogue, Mary Jane Jacob, Places With A Past: New Site-Specific Art in
Charleston (New York: Rizzoli International, 1991).

6 Exhibition catalogue: Mary Jane Jacob, Culture in Action: A Public Program of
Sculpture Chicago (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995) and Miwon Kwon, One Place After
Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2004).

7 See Andrea Fraser, Services: A Working-Group Exhibition, http://eipcp.net/trans-
versal/0102/fraser/en and Andrea Fraser, "What's lntangible, Transitory, Mediating,
Participatory, and Renderedm the Public Sphere?", vol. 80, October magazme, 1997.

8 Julia Bryan-Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley,

Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2009).

9 Nicolas Bournaud, Relationa!Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002).

10 Exhibition catalogue: Peter Weibel, Kontext Kunst (Koln* DuMont, 1994).

11 Suzanne Lacy, Mapping the Tbrrain: New Genre Public Art (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995).

12 Suzi Cablik, 77ie Reenchantment of Art (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991).

13 Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modem Art
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004).

14 Participation, Claire Bishop, ed. (London: Whitechapel and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2006).

15 Situation, Claire Doherty, ed. (London: Whitechapel and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 2009).

16 See Mana Lind, "The Collaborahve TUrn" in Taking the Matter Into Common Hands,
Johanna Billing, Maria Lind, Lars Nilsson, eds. (London: Black Dog Publishing,

2007); and Judith Schwartzbart, "The Social as Medium," in Meaningand Motivation,
Collected Newsletters, Mana Lind, Soren Grammel, Katharina Schlieben, Judith
Schwarzbart, Ana Paula Cohen, Juleinne Lorz, Tfessa Praun, eds. (FTankfurt: Kunstverein
Miinchen and Revolver Archiv fiir aktuelle Kunst, 2005).

17 See The Participation Reader, Andrea Cornwall, ed. (London and New York: Zed
Books, 2011).

18 See Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of SpaUal Practice, Markus Miessen

Opposite , top to bottom: Damir Niksic delivers his performance on the Miljacka
Schuurman). In Albania, Peter Lang discusses the editoris introduction of Lonely
editors in choosing the book’s title over "former Yugoslavia" or "South East Eurof

and Shumon Basar, eds. (Cambndge, Mass.. MIT Press, 2006) and Markus
Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation (Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticahty)
(Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010).

19 See Mana Lind, "What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design" in Selected
Maria Lind Writing, Brian Kuan Wood, ed. (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010).

20 See http://www.schleuser.net/en/pl_l.php

21 Mana Lind, "We Support Mobility" in Symbolproduktion, eds. Fferida Heuck, Ralf
Homann, Manuela Unverdorben (Berlin: Coldrausch Kiinstlerinnenprojekt Art IT, 2004).

22 Lisa Diedrich, "Architecture as an Allusion: Hermann Hiller and the Planet of the
Freie Klasse," Collected Newsletters, Mana Lind, Soren Crammel, Katharina
Schlieben, Judith Schwarzbart, Ana Paula Cohen, Julienne Lorz, Tfessa Praun, eds.
(Frankfurt: Kunstverein Miinchen and Revolver Archiv fur aktuelle Kunst, 2005).

23 See Maria Lind, "Exchange & Transform (Arbeitstitel)" in Selected Maria Lind Writing,
Brian Kuan Wood, ed. (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010).

24 Farida Heuck, Ralf Homann, Manuela Unverdorben, "Art Meets the Corporate World;
The Bundesverband Schleppen & Schleusen (National Association for Smuggling
People) Tfekes Successful Stock," in Collected Newsletters, Mana Lind, Soren
Crammel, Katharina Schlieben, Judith Schwartzbart, Ana Paula Cohen, Julienne Lorz,
Tfessa Praun, eds. (Frankfurt: Kunstverein Miinchen and Revovler Archiv fiir aktuell
Kunst, 2005).

25 Lost HighwayExpedition Photobook, Kathenne Carl and Srdjanjovanovic Weiss, eds,
(Rotterdam: Veenman Publishers, 2007).

26 See, for example, Claire Doherty and Paul CNeill, Locating the Producers: Durational
Approaches to Public Art (Amsterdam: Antenna Valiz, 2009).

27 See http://www.e-flux.com/timebank/

28 Christina Linden, "En kort lista- Tfenkar om social praktik" in Paletten, no. 1, 2011.

29 Manifesta 8 catalogue: Maria Lind, "Manifesta Murcia," (Milano: Silvana Editoriale,
2010 ).

30 Cilles Deleuze, Félix Cuattari, Robert Brinkley, “What is a Mmor Literature?" in
Mississippi Review, vol. 11, no. 3, Wmter/Spring 1983: 13-33.

river as part of Lost Highway Expedition in Sarajevo (Photograph by Arnoud
Planet’s guidebook for the Western Balkans, which explains the difficulty for the
>e" (Photograph by Kyong Park).

DEMOCRAHZING
URBANIZAHON AND
THE SEARCH FOR A NEW
CMC IMACI NATION

TEDDY CRUZ

DEMOCRATIZING URBANIZATION AND THE SEARCH FOR A NEW CMC IMAGINATION

THE SHRINKING RELEVANCY OF THE PUBLIC

The obvious is staring us—the public—in the
face and, yet, we're ignoring it. We occupy a
critical juncture in history, defined by unprec-
edented socio-economic, political, and envi-
ronmental crises across any imaginable reg¬
ister. Our institutions of culture, governance,
and urban development have atrophied, with-
out knowing how to re-invent themselves, or
construct alternative procedures to engage
the conditions that have produced the crises
in the first place.

How many Wall Street bailouts, foreclo-
sures, superfluous debt ceiling debates, and
tea-party zealots—amid the defunding of our
public education system, and abandonment of
healthcare and energy legislature—will it take
to prompt our own spring revolution? The pas-
sivity of the American public and its Creative
sectors, in the context of this renewed return
to excessive inequality and ideological polar-
ization, makes clear that protests on par with
those that occurred in Cairos Tahrir Square
will never happen in the US. Here, there is no
state of emergency. We lack the kind of col-
lective sense of urgency that would prompt
us to fundamentally question our own ways of
thinking and acting, and form new spaces of
operation.

It is also obvious that we learned the best
lesson in Democracy 101 from those Middle
Eastern societies the American public was
lead to believe were turban-wearing terror-
ists: Democracy is not simply the right to be
left alone. Rather it is defined by the co-exis-
tence with others in space, a collective ethos,
regardless of social media, that uncondition-
ally stands for social rights. I do not mean
to naively suggest that those revolutionary
instances can be reproduced that easily; each
cultural space has its own socio-political com-
plexity. We have witnessed, for example, how
specific geo-political configurations and his¬
torie power alliances have made it difficult to
repeat Egypt stransformation in Syria, Bahrain
and Libya. Nonetheless, the uncompromising
collective act of seeking transformation of the
stagnant status quo resonates, and should
encourage our own self-critique.

Sufficient economic analysis of ourcurrent
dilemma has shown the similarities between
late 1920's depression-era conditions and our
own situation today. Both socio-economic cri¬
ses were characterized by the not-so-coinci-
dental meeting of excessive inequality and low
marginal tax rates: At these critical points, the
income gap between the very wealthy and all
other Americans reached record levels. In both
1928 and 2008 the top one percent averaged
an income approximately 1,000 times high-
er than Americas bottom 90 percent, while
enjoying the lowest taxation available.

While the similarities are clear, there
hasn't been enough discussion of the very
different outeomes following both periods.
In general, the post-depression years were
marked by a self-assured consolidation of a
collective political will to engage in public par-
ticipation and public debate. Briefly, the politi¬
cal period following the depression witnessed
the emergence of the New Deal and with it a
commitment to invest in public infrastrueture,
education, and Services partly enabled by
higher marginal tax rates to the wealthy; in the
1950s, the marginal tax rate to the upperclass
was 91 percent compared to 35 percent today,
ultimately resulting in a few decades of more
equitable distribution of economic and eivie
resources.

The economic and infrastructural growth
experienced during that period of committed
public spending clearly demonstrates that
trickle-down economics, based on de-tax-
ing the rich so that its wealth will eventually
touch the rest of Americans, has been the fake
democratic fapade of neo-liberal models. This
falsehood had forced us to believe and defend
another one: the mythology of the American
Dream as promised by an ownership society,
low taxes, and individual freedoms that allow
for uneheeked economic expansion. Today, as
the rich become richer in the middle of soaring
unemployment rates, certain socio-economic
realities, specific to the United States, reveal
themselves. We are the only country in the
world where the poor defend the rich, possi-
bly with the belief that someday the American
Dream will enable us all to be as wealthy. The

LIVING AS FORM

public ethos of this period also contradicts the
conservative belief that social and economic
strength depend on less government. Rather,
they require an intelligent one, defined by
responsible taxation, progressive public poli¬
cy, and proactive collective imagination.

Our current period of crisis, then, has been
defined by exactly the opposite. The absence
of a self-assured political leadership and con-
structive debate of and about the public has
allowed the public to be hijacked by right wing
demagogy that turns every socially based
effort into a communist coup, co-opted by poli-
tics of fear. In fact, the very word "public" has
become a liability, and therefore has taken on a
negative connotation, even within our 'public,'
political institutions; in fact, the way public
option disappeared from Obamas Health Care
Bill reflects this. Therefore, in my mind, dif¬
ferent from the post-depression years, which
enabled a healthy public debate and gen¬
eral accountability for the re-distribution of
resources, our period has been characterized
by a shrinking conception of the public and
the consolidation of a powerful elite of indi¬
vidual or corporate wealth, which, in fact, has
remained unaffected and unaccountable today.

From the time of Margaret Thatcher to
Ronald Reagans re-installment of pre-depres-
sion era free-market economic policies based
on de-regulation and hyper excessive priva-
tization of resources in the early 1980s, we
have once more witnessed the ascendance
of income inequality and social disparity that
has yielded the current crisis. Equally obvi-
ous is that these typical neo-liberal economic
models not only enabled a small elite to be in
control of economic power but, this time, in
control of political power as well, in unprece-
dented ways. What I am referring to is the phil-
anthropic and lobbying machines sponsored
by right wing foundations that have enabled
this economic elite to own not only the bulk of
resources but also the media and information
networks that manipulate public opinion and
the electorate. This consolidation of the eco¬
nomic and political power of this wealthy elite
to lobby and install an anti-taxes, anti-immi-
gration and anti-public culture in our time is

what makes our period radically different from
the post depression era, cementing the final
erosion of public participation from the politi¬
cal process and a culture of impunity in the
upper echelons of institutional structures.

The ultimate impact of this Consolidated
economic and political hegemony can be illus-
trated in what I call the Three Slaps on the Face
of the American Public since 2008.1. After the
big bubble of economic growth burst in Sep¬
tember of 2008, the public unwantedly came
to the rescue of the architects of the crisis by
bailing out the banking industry (first slap).
2. Following this, the lack of collateral regu-
lation to protect homeowners in the manage¬
ment of loan defaults resulted in millions of
foreclosures, producing further insecurity and
unprecedented unemployment rates (second
slap). 3. Finally, the unfolding of this econom¬
ic crisis and its political upheaval has recently
enabled this conservative wealthy minority
to de-fund the public with massive spending
cuts on education, health, and social Servic¬
es without raising any taxes to the wealthy
(third slap). So, we are now paralyzed, silently
witnessing the most blatant politics of unac-
countability, shrinking social and public insti¬
tutions, and not a single proposal or action that
suggests a different approach or arrangement.

So, ours is primarily a cultural crisis—
rather than an economic or environmental
one—resulting in the inability of institutions to
question their ways of thinking, or the rigid-
ity of their protocols and silos. It is within this
radical context that we must question the role
of art and humanities and their contingent
cultural institutions of pedagogy, production,
display, and distribution. A more functional
relationship between art and the everyday is
urgently needed, through which artists can act
as interlocutors across this polarized territory,
intervening in the debate itself and mediating
new forms of acting and living.

In fact, one primary site of artistic inter-
vention today is the gap itself that has been
produced between cultural institutions and
the public, instigating a new civic imagination
and political will. It is not enough in ourtime to
only give art the task of metaphorically reveal-

Opposite: Time/Food is a temporary eatery that operates on the Time/Bank economic system—a platform where mdividuals can pool time and skills, bypassing
money as a means of value. Visitors to Time/Food pay for their lunch in exchange for one half-hour of time currency earned by helping others in the Time/Bank
community. (Photographs by Sam Horme)

. w

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A wIunteerNetwork for -
Partidpation In Healtficue

AæSffm X

ing the very socio-economic histories and
injustices that have produced these crises,
but it is essential that art becomes an instru¬
ment to construct specific procedures that can
transcend them. The revision of our own artis-
tic procedures is essential today, expanded
modes of practice to engage alternative sites
of research and pedagogy, new conceptions
of cultural and economic production and the
re-organization of social relations seem more
urgent than ever.

EXPANDING ARTISTIC PRACTICE: FROM CRITICAL
DISTANCE TO CRITICAL PROXIMITY

The same ideological divide in politics today
permeates art and architectures current
implicit debate. On one hand, we find those
who continue to defend these two fields as a
self-referential project of apolitical formalism,
made of hyper-aesthetics for the sake of aes-
thetics, which continues to press the notion

of the avant-garde as an autonomous project,
'needing' a critical distance from the institu-
tions to operate critically in the research of
experimental form. On the other hand, we find
those who need to step out of this autonomy
in order to engage the socio-political and eco¬
nomic domains that have remained peripheral
to the specializations of art and architecture,
questioning our professions' powerlessness in
the context of the worlds most pressing cur¬
rent crises.

This need to expand the realm of estab-
lished artistic practices is a direct result of our
Creative fields' unconditional love affair, in the
last years, with a system of economic excess
that was needed to legitimize artistic experi-
mentation. These emerging activist practices
seek, instead, for a project of radicalproximity
to the institutions, transforming them in order
to produce new aesthetic categories that can
problematize the relationship of the social, the

Above: Haha took over a vacated storefront on Greenleaf Street in Chicago, where they planted a hydroponic garden to provide produce for local AIDS and HIV
patients (Photograph by Haha, Courtesy Sculpture Chicago).

DEMOCRATIZING URBANIZATION AND THE SEARCH FOR A NEW CMC 1MAGINATION

political, and the formal.

In these practices, artists are responsible
for imagining counter spatial procedures, and
political and economic structures that can
produce new modes of social encounters.
Without altering the exclusionary policies
that have produced the current crises in the
first place, our professions will continue to
be subordinated by visionless and homoge-
neous environments defined by the bottom-
line of developers' spreadsheets as well as
neo-conservative politics and economics of
a hyper-individualistic ownership society. In
essence, then ( the autonomous role of artists
needs to be coupled with the role of the activ-
ist. I don't see one as more important than the
other because both are necessary today.

NEW SITES OF EXPERIMENTATION: AN URBANISM
BEYOND THE PROPERTY LINE

The world's architecture intelligentsia—sup-
ported by the pre-2008 glamorous economy
—flocked en masse to The Arab Emirates and
China to help build dream castles that would
catapult these enclaves of wealth as global
epicentres of urban development. Yet many of
these high-profile projects have only perpetu-
ated the exhausted recipes of an oil hungry,
U.S.-style globalization, camouflaging with
hyper-aesthetics an architecture of exclu-
sion based on urbanities of surveillance and
control. Other than a few isolated architec-
tural interventions whose images have been
disseminated widely, no major ideas were
advanced to transform existing paradigms of
housing, infrastructure, and density.

While the world had been focused on those
enclaves of abundance up until our current
economic downturn, the most radical ideas
advancing new models of urban development
were produced in the margins, across Latin
American cities. Challenging the neo-liberal
urban logic of development, which is founded
on top-down privatization, homogeneity and
exclusion, visionary mayors in cities such as
Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Bogota, and Medellin
encouraged new public participation, civic
culture, and unorthodox cross-institutional
collaborations, rethinking the meaning of

infrastructure, housing, and density. I cannot
think of any other continental region where
we can find this type of collective effort led by
municipal and federal governments seeking a
new brand of progressive politics.

This suggests the need to reorient our
focus to other sites of research and interven-
tion, arguing that some of the most relevant
practices and projects forwarding socio-eco-
nomic sustainability will not emerge from sites
of abundance but from sites of scarcity. New
experimental practices of research and inter-
vention will emerge from zones of conflict. It
is in the periphery where conditions of social
emergency are transforming our ways of think-
ing about urbanization.

RADICALIZING THE PARTICULAR: MOVING FROM
THE AMBIGUITY OF THE PUBLIC TO THE SPECIFIC-
ITY OF RIGHTS

We need to move beyond the abstraction of the
"global" in order to engage with the particu-
larities of the political inscribed within local
geographies of conflict. It is within this speci-
ficity where contemporary artistic practice
needs to reposition itself in order to expose
the particularity of hidden institutional his-
tories, revealing the missing information that
can allow us to piece together a more accurate j
anticipatory urban research and intervention.
To be political in our field requires that we
commit to revealing conditions of conflict and
the institutional mechanisms that perpetu-
ate them. What produced the crisis in the first
place? Only knowing the specific conditions
that produced it can enable us to think politi-
cally. In other words, artistic and architectural
experimentation in our time should involve the
specific re-organization of the political and
economic conditions that continue to produce
conflict between top-down forces of urbaniza¬
tion and bottom-up social and ecological net-
works, enclaves of mega wealth and sectors of
marginalization. Conflict is a Creative tool.

At this moment, it is not buildings, but the
fundamental re-organization of socio-eco-
nomic relations that is the necessary ground
for producing new paradigms of democratiza-
tion and urbanization. Artists and architects

have a role in the conceptualization of such
new protocols, infiltrating into existing insti-
tutional mechanisms in order to reconstruct
politics itself, not simply political art or archi-
tecture. It has been said that the Civil Rights
movement in the United States began in a bus.
At least that is the image that detonated the
unfolding of such constitutional transforma-
tion. A small act trickling up into the collec-
tive's awareness. While public transport at the
time was labeled "public," it wasn't actually
accessible to all. To that end, it is necessary
to move from the generality of the term "pub¬
lic" in our political debate to the specificity of
rights to the city, and its neighborhoods. This
would expand the idea that architects and art-
ists, besides being producers of buildings and
objects, can be designers of political process-
es, alternative economic models, and collabo-
rations across institutions and jurisdictions.
This can be in the form of small, incremental
acts of retrofit of existing urban fabrics and
regulation, encroaching into the privatization
of public domain and infrastructure, as well as
the rigidity of institutional thinking.

NEW URBAN PEDAGOGY: THE VISUAUZATION OF
A NEW CIVIC IMAGINATION

Fundamental to the rethinking of exclusion-
ary political and economic frameworks that
defined the logics of uneven urban develop¬
ment in the last years is the translation and
visualization of the socio-cultural and eco¬
nomic entrepreneurial intelligence embedded
in many marginal, immigrant neighborhoods.
While the global city had become the privi-
leged site of consumption and display, margin¬
al neighborhoods across the world remained
sites of cultural production. But the hidden
socio-economic value of these immigrant
communities' informal transactions across
bottom-up cultural production, economies and
densities, continues to be off the radar of con-
ventionaltop-down planning institutions.

If we consider citizenship as a Creative
act, it is new immigrants in the U.S. today who
are pointing at a new conception of civic cul-
ture and a more inclusive city. In this context,

I see informal urbanization as the site of a new
interpretation of community, citizenship, and
praxis, where emergent urban configurations

Above: Suzanne Lacy’s The Roof Is On Fire operated as an outlet for Oakland teens to openly discuss pressing topics while an
national news media, listened in (Courtesy Suzanne Lacy).

audience, including the local and

DEM0CRATIZ1NG URBANIZATION AND THE SEARCH EOR A NEW CMC IMAGINATKDN

produced out of social emergency suggest the
performative role of individuals constructing
their own spaces. The most radical urban inter-
ventions in our time have in fact emerged in
marginal neighborhoods, as immigrants have
been injecting informal economies and hous-
ing additions into mono-use parcels, implicitly
proposing the urgent revision of current dis-
criminating land-use policies that have per-
petuated zoning as a punitive tool to prevent
socialization, instead of a generative tool that
organizes activity and economy.

But these immigrant communities' invis¬
ible urban praxis needs interpretation and rep-
resentation; this is the space of intervention
institutions of art, culture, and governance
need to engage. How do we mobilize this activ-
ism into new spatial and economic infrastruc-
tures that benefit these 'communities of prac-
tice in the long term, beyond the short-term
problem solving of private developers or the
institutions of charity?

But, often, just as artists and architects
lack awareness of the specific political and
social knowledge embedded within these mar¬
ginal communities, community activists also
lack the conceptual devices to enable their
own everyday procedures, and how their neigh-
borhood agency can trickle up to produce new
institutional transformations. It is in the con-
text of these conditions where a different role
for art, architecture, environmental, and com¬
munity activist practices can emerge. One that
goes beyond the metaphorical representation
of people, where only the community's sym-
bolic image is amplified (what a community
"looks" like) instead of its operative dimension
(what a community "does"). New knowledge-
exchange corridors can be produced, between
the specialized knowledge of institutions and
the ethical knowledge of "community," and art¬
ists can have a role to facilitate this exchange,
occupying the gap between the visible and the
invisible.

Questioning new forms of urban pedago-
gy is one of the most critical sites for artistic
investigation and practice today, do we pro¬
duce new interfaces with the public to raise
awareness of the conditions that have pro¬

duced environmental, economic and social
crises? The conventional structures and pro-
tocols of academic institutions may be seen to
be at odds with activist practices, which are,
by their very nature, organic and extra-aca-
demic. Should activist practices challengethe
pedagogical structures within the institution?
Are new modes of teaching and learning called
for?

Today, it is essential to reorient our gaze
toward the drama embedded in the reality of
the everyday and in doing so, engage the shift-
ing socio-political and economic domains that
have been ungraspable by art and design. It is
not the "image" of the everyday and its meta¬
phorical content that is at stake here, though.
More than ever, we must engage the 'praxis'
of the everyday, enabling functional relation-
ships between individuals, as collectives, and
their environments, as new critical interfaces
between research, artistic intervention, and
the production of the city.

MICROUTOPIAS:
PUBLIC PRACTICE IN
THE PUBLIC SPHERE

CAROL

BECKER

LIVING AS FORM

“THE ESSENTIAL
UTOPIA/’ SAYS
TO THEODOR
CRITIQUE OF W

FUNCTION OF
ERNST BLOCH
ADORNO, “IS A
HAT IS PRESENT ” 1

There used to be a greater distinction between
private and public. Private events—enact-
ments of the particulars of personal Life—took
place in what was understood as the private
sphere. Meanwhile, public events—the public
engagement of public issues, such as poli-
tics—took place in the public sphere. Now,
weighty discussions about public issues, as
well as minute, private intimacies, are posted
daily on social media sites. Those separations,
which once seemed basic, clear, and reliable,
now appear blurred.

While many have noted these changes,
little understanding exists about the societal
impact of such implosions and inversions in
relationship to democracy. How are political
affairs influenced when open engagement
with public issues is increasingly missing
from public discourse? And what about the
effects of celebrity culture, in which topics
that would have been considered narcissistic
self-absorption at one time are now considered
newsworthy, and glut the media? It appears
that the private has colonized the public and,
in fact, the concept of a "public" has all but
disappeared—except perhaps as an epithet
used by the right wing to reflect its scorn for
what its adherents portray as an outdated, lib¬
eral notion of citizenship.

Just as nature most recently unleashed
catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis on
our physical landscape, tectonic events have

rocked our political one, helping us to reimag-
ine the meaning of public space and even the
traditional notion of the public square. As Hen-
ri Lefebvre wrote, "Events belie forecasts. To
the extent that events are historie, they upset
calculations." 2

We watched transfixed and enthralled by
the political upheaval in Egypt—a microutopian
moment organized via cell phones and social
media, such as Twitter, in an elaborately doeu-
mented process that took years to manifest,
ineluding side trips to Serbia, for example, to
learn best practices. But the final transforma-
tion occurred in real time and space in Tahrir
("Liberation") Square, a public arena designed
by French urban planner Baron Haussmann to
simulate the Paris of Napoleon III. The physi¬
cal reality of those prepared to stay in Tahrir
Square until President Hosni Mubarak stepped
down—a real-life, choreographed showdown—
was so large in scale, duration, and imagination
that it not only transformed Egypt, but contin-
ues to shake the region (Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq,
Iran, Syria, and Libya) to very dramatic, exhila-
rating, and even devastating effect.

The events in Egypt and elsewhere in the
Middle East demonstrated yet again that the
Internet is a very effective organizing tool
(used for good and bad). But it has not replaced
human interaction and the manifestation of
real resistance in public space which occurs
when bodies are put on the line. No matter how

Previous page: Paul Ramirez Jonas* Key to the City bestowed the key to New York City—an honor usually reserved for dignitaries and heroes—to esteemed and
everyday citizens alike (Photograph by Paul Ramirez Jonas, Courtesy Creative Time).

MICROUTOPIAS: PUBLIC PRACTICE IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

many digital petitions we sign, when real soci-
etal change occurs, it most often happens in a
physical location where a mass of people con-
gregates for an assignation. Even most voting
requires that we physically show up at a desig-
nated place to east our vote with the populace.

Egypt reconfirmed that we humans need
the agora —the public square—as it existed in
ancient Greece, a site where we come together
physically, as bodies, in orderto hearoneanoth-
er. We show force as a crowd—a purposeful mob,
a res publica —with an expressed shared desire.
In the architecture of traditional cities, one
can usually find a place where the collective
gathers, whether in Egypt's Tahrir Square, Ath¬
ens' Syntagma Square, Washington's National
Mali, Argentinas Plaza de Mayo, or Madison,
Wisconsin's Capitol Square (which usually
serves as the site of an excellent outdoor farm-
ers' market when it is not a place of protest).

As social observers and cultural commen-
tators who employ multiple forms and strate-
gies to engage their audiences, artists are
uniquely positioned to respond to social trans-
formation and to educate communities about
its complexity and implications. But now that
more people are employing art forms to com-
municate, how can artists hope to make an
impact in this sphere? And how can we think
of such space as local when technology focus-
es our thoughts so profoundly on the global?
Or is public space always local—defined by a
particular group, who now affects its meaning
from one society to the next in our increasing-
ly interconnected world?

The challenge to navigate the tension
between public and private realms is hardly
new to artists. After all, museums, as well as
other traditional art spaces, can be considered
a kind of "public space," since these institu-
tions are partly funded by both cities and
states, or sit on park district land. Yet, they are
speeifieally designed to feel private. In fact,
we often enter museums expecting to experi-
ence something deeply personal— moments
that are contrary to the disorder of our daily
lives—despite the presence of others, who dis-
rupt our sense of intimaey and ownership of
the space.

So even when throngs surrounded Marina
Abramovic during the run of her piece The Art¬
ist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in
2010, those participating in it expected a pri¬
vate moment. For this work, Abramovic gave
visitors the opportunity to sit facing her, qui-
etly, for as long as they desired, while hun-
dreds of other visitors watched. The perfor¬
mance was recorded on video, under blaring
lights, and then posted on the Internet, where
it would reside permanently for all to see. So
how could this be a private experience? And
yet it was. For many, this very public interac-
tion with Abramovic—who acted as both the
artist and the art piece—was revelatory, con-
templative, and emotional.

The more the Museum of Modern Art
makes itself available for such encounters, the
more the space is transformed into a performa-
tive space within which we, as viewers, collab-
orate with artists to fabricate our public/pri¬
vate experience. In the winter of 2011, Janine
Antoni, at both the Hayward Gallery in London
and the Haus der Kunst in Munich, surrepti-
tiously placed a letter in visitors' checked
bags. Antoni designed the mass-produced let¬
ter to look like a personal note, handwritten on
a page ripped from a museum program. While
some visitors assumed it was a love letter
from another person, the notes were aetu-
ally sent from an unspeeified work of art—an
imaginary act that generated a real objeet—
extending the experience of the museum
beyond the physical building, and highlighting
the intimate, relational connection between art
and spectator.

A number of artists have used these inver-
sions of public/private to take on a new role
and a new line of interrogation appropriate to
this historical moment. Because artists often
gravitate to what is missing, many have com-
mitted themselves to creating events that con-
nect people and ideas in the public sphere
because they discern that what is missing now
is public discourse about the relationship of
individuals to society. Artists also réconfigure
contemporary physical or psychical elements
into an imagined, ideal, hypothetical organi-
zation of reality. When they felt that the world

LIVING AS FORM

was too sanitized and our interior life was
not respected, understood, or made visible,
they wanted to bring those subjective issues
into the public arena. Later, as this interiority
became the norm, artists continued to focus
on what was still silenced—for example, sexu-
ality, gender, and transgender—the complex
emotions and sociology of identity.

Now many artists fear that the world has
become too interior-focused and that private
space and identity are all there is, even in the
public arena. Most significantly, those person¬
al issues are rarely linked to the greater social
context that could help frame them, isolate
their origins, and catalyze their resolutions. As
sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes, "...Public
Space is not much more than a giant screen on
which private worries are projected without, in
the course of magnification, ceasing to be pri¬
vate." 3 Public confession has become the norm,
as we regress to a shame-based society. "And
so," adds Bauman, "public space is increas-
ingly empty of public issues." 4 As artists take
on these contradictions, their actions are
not necessarily intended to challenge the art
worlds of galleries and museums but, rather, to
help reinvigorate collectivity and connectivity
throughout the larger world.

They do this through the creation of
microutopic communities—small locations of
utopian interaction. Utopia, from the Greek
utopos, meaning "good place" (as opposed to
outopos, meaning "no place"), is the creation
of imaginary "good places" that do not exist on
any map, other than that of the imagination.
Such experiments attempt to create physi-
cal manifestations of an ideal "humanity" in
an inhumane world—interventions in a world
overrun by the spectacle. Even if their duration
is brief, these interventions reflect the desire
to give form to what Ernst Bloch might call "the
not yet conscious," that which "anticipates"
and "illuminates" 5 what might be possible. And
because utopian thinking is always communal,
it has always historically implied the coming
together of people within an imagined societal
situation. (Therefore, you cannot have a utopia
of one; an idealized experience with oneself
would not qualify as "utopia" in the philosoph-

ical sense with which it has most often been
employed.)

By asking her museum audience to sit with
her in deep silence, Abramovic created such a
microutopian moment. Similarly, Tino Seghal,
in This Progress at the Guggenheim Museum
in New York, asked visitors to discuss the con-
cept of "progress" with performers who greeted
them as they walked up the ramps. As visitors
approached the top of the museum, the age
of the performers increased and the nature of
the dialogue they initiated became less overtly
philosophical and more narrative. These were
interventions that engaged audiences in unex-
pected acts with an unspecified result.

Art is often a kind of dreaming the world into
being, a transmutation of thought into mate¬
rial reality, and an affirmation that the physical
world begins in the incorporeal—in ideas. Even
Marx, the materialist, believed in the uniqueness
of humans to imagine their world into being. He
wrote that humans were better architects than
bees and ants—the great builders of collective
living—because they could see the plan before
building it. 6 In other words, we humans could
"anticipate" what we would create.

Art is the great anticipator. It generates
an "interpretation of that which is, in terms of
that-which-is-not," as Rousseau might say. 7 If
one thinks that what exists is inevitable, then
there is no space for art. This is why, in a very
pragmatic society like the U.S., art is so often
misunderstood. Yet, for that same reason, art is
also so essential.

At this time, there is a collective under-
standing that, as John Muse wrote in an essay
about Flash Mobs, "Everybody is an audience
all the time." 8 He adds, "Public spaces are
more than ever becoming sites for communal
isolation." 9 Artists are both attempting to cir-
cumvent the spectacle and to reclaim urban
space for the coming together of its inhabit-
ants. They embrace diversity and resist the
suburbanization of such space. But how do
you bring people together to truly make a con-
nection between them? Cultural anthropolo-
gist Arjun Appadurai asserts that the answer
is microutopian. "We need to think of the big-
gest problems in the world," he has said, "and

Opposite :Ramlrez Jonas reinvented the key to the city as a master key able to unlock more than 20 sites across New York City’s five boroughs, ineluding community
gardens, cemeteries, police stations, and museums, and invited the people of the city to exchange keys in small bestowal ceremonies (Photograph by Paul Ramirez
Jonas, Courtesy Creative Time).

MICROUTOPIAS: PUBLIC PRACTICE IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

come up with the smallest contribution toward
their solution." It's a sentiment the artist Paul
Ramirez Jonas has alluded to in work that has
so often addressed both the interests, and the
complexities, of the creation of "public."

What might we think of as the biggest
problems and what might be the smallest Solu¬
tions? Ramirez Jonas' 2010 Creative Time
commission, TheKeyto the City, presented the
following questions: How can we reclaim the
centrality of citizenship as the most important
element of society? How can keys to the city
be available to all New Yorkers? And can this
act of reclaiming the city be done in the most
recognized public site of all—Times Square?
According to written and spoken testimonies,
the piece created a temporary community, as
people waited to gift and to receive the keys.
And it spread across the city, encouraging citi-
zens to explore and experience greater access
to one of the least intimate global cities in
the world.

His newest piece. The Commons, is a hero-
ic statue modeled after the bronze original of
Marcus Aurelius atop his steed, located in the
Campidoglio in Rome. But this horse has no
rider, and it is made of cork, so that the public
can use pushpins to leave notices for others,
and watch it erode as the material deteriorates.
The piece, which is ephemeral, collective, and
historical, immediately reminded me of the
Polygonal Wall in Delphi, where the ancient
Greeks posted public messages in stone—the
release of slaves by their owners, the amount
of time a slave would stay after the decision of
release, an inscription of gratitude to a bene-
factor, the record of a debt repaid. Private acts
were recorded in the public sphere to last
forever.

In Ramirez Jonas' act of creating the rider-
less horse, we have a perfect gesture for this
historical moment. The unspecified rider—the
completion of the heroic statue—can only be
the public itself. Without the rider, the gal-
loping horse has no clear direction, and with¬
out the public, the piece is incomplete. As
Jacques Ranciére would say, "The Spectator
also acts..." 10 Engagement is the only antidote
to the spectacle. And the reinvention of public

Opposite:The cork version of Marcus Aurelius’ steed created by Ramirez Jonas
(Photograph by Paul Ramirez Jonas, Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates).

space is the only antidote to its disappearance.
Like Ramirez Jonas, artists have taken on the
task of creating microutopian interventions
that allow us to dream back the communities
we fear we have lost.

Carol Becker first presented this piece as a lecture at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York, April 28, 2011.

ENDNOTES

1 Ernst Bloch, The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, Jack Zipes
and Frank Mecklenburg, trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988): 12.

2 Henri Lefebvre, The Explosion: Marxism and the French Upheaval, Alfred Ehrenfeld,
trans. (New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks,1969): 7.

3 Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualized Society (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 2001): 107.

4 Ibid.: 108.

5 Jack Zipes, "Introduction: Toward a Realization of Anticipatory Illumination," Bloch,
xxxi.

6 David Harvey, A Companion to Marx's Capital (London: Verso, 2010): 112.

7 Alain Martineau, HerbertMarcuse's Utopia (Montreal: Harvest House, 1986): 35.

8 John H. Muse, "Flash Mobs and the Diffusion of Audience," in Theater, 40:3,

Tom Seiler, ed. (New Haven: Yale School of Drama, 2010): 12.

9 Ibid.

10 Jacques Ranciére, The Emancipated Spectator, Gregory Elliott, trans. (London: Verso,
2009): 13.

a variety of messages and pictures pinned on by the public

' IN ' A*i • '

EVENIWORK:

TOE FOURFOLD MATRIX
OF COKTEMPORARY
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

BRIAN HOLMES

EVENTWORK; THE FOURFOLD MATRIX OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Art into life: Is there any more persistent uto¬
pia in the history of vanguard expressions?
Shedding its external forms, its inherited tech-
niques, its specialized materials, art becomes
a living gesture, rippling out across the sen¬
sible surface of humanity. It creates an ethos,
a mythos, an intensely vibrant presence; it
migrates from the pencil, the chisel or the
brush into ways of doing and modes of being.
From the German Romantics to the Beatnik
poets, from the Dadaists to the Living Theater,
this story has been told again and again, each
time with a startling twist on the same under-
lying phrase. At stake is more than the search
for stylistic renewal: its about transforming
your everyday existence.

Theory into revolution: The fundamental
demand of the thinkers and rioters of May '68
was also "change life" (changer la vie). But
from a revolutionary viewpoint, the conse-
quences of intimate desire should be econom-
ic and structural. Situationist theory had no
meaning without immediate communization.
"Marx, Mao, Marcuse" was a slogan for the
streets. The self-overcoming of art was under-
stood as just one part of a program to vanquish
class divides, transform labor relations and
put alienated individuals back in touch with
one another.

The '60s were full of wild fantasies and
unrealized potentials; yet significant experi-
ments were undertaken, with consequences
extending up to the present. Campus radical-
ism gave new life to educational alternatives,
resulting in large-scale initiatives like the
University Without Walls in the United States
or the Open University in Britain. The coun-
ter-cultural use of hand-held video cameras
led to radical media projects like Paper Tiger
Television, Deep Dish TV and Indymedia.
Politics itself went through a metamorphosis:
autonomous Marxism gave rise to self-orga-
nized projects all across Europe, while affinity
groups based on Quaker conceptions of direct
democracy took deep root in the USA, struc-
turing the anti-nuclear movement, becoming
professionalized in the NGOs of the '80s, then
surging back at full anarchist force in Seattle.
From the AIDS movements onwards, activism

regained urgency and seriousness, grappling
with concrete and progressively more com-
plex issues such as globalization and climate
change. Yet society still tends to absorb the
transformations, to neutralize the inventions.
The question is not how to aestheticize "living
as form," in order to display the results for con-
templation in a museum. The question is how
to change the forms in which we are living.

Social movements are vehicles for this
metamorphosis. At times they generate his¬
torie events, like the occupation of public
squares that unfolded across the world in
2011. Through the stoppage of "business as
usual" they alter life-paths, shift labor routines
and career horizons along with laws and gov-
ernments, and contribute to long-lasting phil-
osophical and affective transfigurations. Yet
despite their historie dimensions, the sources
of social movements are intimate, aspirational:
they grow out of small groups, they crystal-
lize around what Guattari called "non-discur-
sive, pathic knowledge." 1 Their capacity for
sparking change is widely coveted in our era.
Micro-movements in the form of trends, fash-
ions and crazes are continually ignited, chan-
neled and fueled by PR strategists, in order to
instrumentalize the upwelling of social desire.
Still grassroots groups, vanguard projects and
intentional communities continue to take their
own lives as raw material, inventing alternate
futures and hoping to generate models, possi-
bilities and tools for others.

Absorbing all this historical experience,
social movements have expanded to inelude
at least four dimensions. Critical research is
fundamental to todays movements, which
are always at grips with complex legal, sci¬
entific and economic problems. Participatory
art is vital to any group taking its issues to
the streets, because it stresses a commitment
to both representation and lived experience.
Networked communications and strategies of
mass-media penetration are another charac-
teristic of contemporary movements, because
ideas and directly embodied struggles just
disappear without a megaphone. Finally,
social movement politics consists in the col-
laborative coordination or "self-organization"

of this whole set of practices, gathering forces,
orchestrating efforts and helping to unleash
events and to deal with their consequences.
These different strands interweave, condense
into gestures and events, then disperse again,
creating the dynamics of the movement. A
fourfold matrix replaces any single, easily
definable initiative.

No doubt the complexity of this fourfold
process explains the rarity of effective inter-
ventionism. But thats the challenge of politi-
cal engagement. What has to be grasped, if we
want to renew our democratic culture, is the
convergence of art, theory, media and politics
into a mobile force that oversteps the limits of
any professional sphere or disciplinary field,
while still drawing on their knowledge and
technical capacities. This essay tries to devel-
op a concept for the fourfold matrix of contem-

porary social movements. The name I propose
for it is eventwork.

But wait a minute—if we're talking grass-
roots activism, why insist on complexity? Why
even mention the disciplines and the profes-
sions? The reason is that the grassroots has
gone urban and suburban and rurban, and it's
us: the precarious middle-class subjects of
contemporary capitalist societies, which are
based on knowledge, technology and commu-
nication. Our disciplines create these societ¬
ies. Our professions seem only able to main-
tain them as they are. The point is to explore
how we can act, and what role art, theory,
media and self-organization can have in effec¬
tive forms of intervention.

Like the sociologist Ulrich Beck in his
book The Risk Society, I think the movement
outside the modernist institutions has been

Above : Since 1981, Paper Tiger TV has been creating programs in New York City about how the media can be used to affect social change (Courtesy Paper Tiger TV).

EVENTWORK. THE FOURFOLD MATRIX OF CONTEMPORARy SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

made necessary by the failure of those insti-
tutions to respond to the dangers created by
modernization itself. 2 The dangers of modern-
ization grew clearer at the close of the postwar
period, when the Keynesian-Fordist mode of
capitalist development revealed its inherent
links with inequality, war, ecological destruc-
tion and the repression of minorities. It became
apparent that not only "hard" science, but also
the social Sciences and humanities were help-
ing to produce the problems; yet nothing in
their internal criteria of truth or legitimacy or
professional success could restrain them. The
most conscious and articulate exponents of
each of the separated disciplines then felt the
need to develop a critique of their own field,
and to merge that critique into an attempt at
social transformation. Only in this way could
they find an immanent response to the sources
of their own alienation. 3

So there is a paradox of eventwork: it starts
from within the disciplines whose limits it
seeks to overcome. In this text ITl start with
the internal contradictions of avant-garde art
in the late '60s, and with the attempt by one
group of Latin American artists to go beyond
them. With that narrative as a backdrop, ITl
sketch out the emergence of an expanded
realm of activism in the post-Fordist era, from
the '70s up to now. The aim is to discover
some basic ideas that could change the way
each of us conceives the relations between
our daily life, our politics, and our discipline
or profession.

In this movement, certain truisms will
run up against their shortfalls. What I want
to make clear is that despite their rhetorical
attractions, the twin formulas of "art into life"
and "theory into revolution" are too simplis-
tic to describe the pathways that lead people
beyond their professional and institutional
limits. The failure to describe those paths with
the right mix of urgency and complexity leads
to the bromides of "relational art" (intimacy on
display in a sterile white cube) or the radical
chic of "critical theory" (revolution for sale in
an academic bookstore). Through their weak-
ness and emptiness, these failures of cultural
critique provoke reactionary calls for a return

to the modernist disciplines (as when we are
enjoined to restrict artistic practice to some
version of "pure form"). The result is a disjunc-
tion from the present and a lingering state of
collective paralysis: which is the most striking
characteristic of left politics today, at least in
the United States.

As living conditions deteriorate in the
capitalist democracies, one pressing question
is how artists, intellectuals, media makers and
political organizers can come together to help
change the course of collective existence.
The answer lies in a move across institution¬
al boundaries and modernist norms. Each of
the separated disciplines needs to define the
paradox of eventwork—and thereby open up a
place for itself, beyond itself, in the fourfold
matrix of contemporary social movements.

HISTORY

Lets go straight to the most impressive
example of eventwork in the late '60s, which
unfolds not in New York or London or Paris,
but in Argentina. This was the moment of the
countrys industrial take-off, when an expand-
ing middle class enjoyed close links to cul¬
tural developments in the metropolitan cen-
ters. In capitalist societies, utopian longings
often accompany periods of economic growth:
because the abundance of material and sym-
bolic production promises real use values. But
since mid-1966 Argentina was under the grip
of a military dictatorship, which repressed indi¬
vidual freedoms and imposed brutal programs
of economic rationalization. Under these con¬
ditions, a circle of self-consciously "vanguard"
artists in Buenos Aires and Rosario began to
sense the futility of the rapid cycles of formal
innovation that had marked the decade of pop,
op, happenings, minimalism, performance and
conceptualism. They became keenly aware
that inventions designed to shatter bourgeois
norms were being used as signs of prestige
and intellectual superiority by the elites, to the
point where, as Leon Ferrari wrote, "the culture
created by the artist becomes his enemy." 4
Therefore, these artists began an increasingly
violent break with the gallery and museum cir¬
cuits that had formerly sustained their prae-

LIVING A5 FORM

tices, using transgressive works, actions and
declarations to curtail their own participation
in officially sanctioned shows.

By mid-summer of 1968 they decided to
organize an independent congress, the "First
National Meeting on Avant-Garde Art." The
goal was to define their autonomy from the
elite cultural system, to formulate their social
ideal—a Guevarist revolution—and to plan
the realization of a work that would embody
their aims. 5 In this work, the aesthetic mate¬
rial, as Ferrari explained, would no longer be
articulated according to formal innovations,
but instead with clearly referential and imme-
diately graspable "meanings" ( significados )
which themselves would be subjected to
transgressive profanation, in order to gener-
ate a powerful denunciation of existing social
conditions. Echoing Ferrari's approach in the
language of semiotics and information theory,
another contributor to the meeting, Nicolås
Rosa, insisted that "the work is experimental
when it proceeds to the rupture of the cultural
model." This rupture was, to be frank, direct
and irreversible, enacted in a visual, verbal and
gestural language that would allow anyone to
participate. It would also be disseminated in
the mass media. Situated outside the elite
institutions and linked to the social context
of its realization, the work would "produce an
effect similar to that of political action," in the
words of the artist Juan Pablo Renzi, who had
drafted the framing text for the meeting. And
because "ideological statements are easily
absorbed," Renzi continued, the revolutionary
work "transforms the ideology into a real event
from within its own structure." Such was the
theoretical program that led to Tucumån Arde,
or"Tucumån is Burning."

What was meant by the title? The group
sought to denounce the process of restructur-
ing that had been imposed on the sugar indus-
try in the province of Tucumån, resulting in
widespread unemployment and hunger for the
workers.Beyond Tucumån itself, they wantedto
revealthe larger program of economic rational-
ization being carried by the national bourgeoi-
sie under dictatorial command, in line with US
and European interests.To do so would require

the production of "counter-information" on the
strictly semiotic level, using factual analysis
to oppose the government propaganda cam-
paign that surrounded the restructuring. So
the artists collaborated with students, profes-
sors, filmmakers, photographers, journalists
and a left-wing union, engaging in a covert
fact-finding mission which they disguised as
a traditional cultural project. In the course of
two trips they visited fields and factories, cir-
culated questionnaires, interviewed, filmed
and photographed workers and their families,
putting their preliminary analysis to the test of
experience. This on-site research was the first
phase of the project, culminating in a press
conference where they ripped the veil from
their activities and explained the real purpose
of their work, hoping—in vain, as it turned out
—to raise a scandal and push their messages
out into the mass media.

An effective denunciation would also
require the production of what the artists
called an "over-informational circuit" ( circuito
sobreinformacional ) which would operate on
the perceptual level, in order to overcome the
persuasive power of the official propaganda
both quantitatively and qualitatively. 6 For the
second phase they formulated a multilayered
exhibition strategy, beginning with teaser
campaigns that introduced potential publics
to the words "Tucumån" and "Tucumån Arde"
through posters, play bilis, cinema screens and
graffiti interventions. They then created two
multimedia exhibitions in union halls in Rosa-
rio and Buenos Aires, attempting in both cases
to use not a single room but the entire build-
ing. They deployed press clippings and images
from the government propaganda campaign
and contrasted these to economic and public-
health statistics as well as diagrams indicating
the links between industrial interests, local
and national officials and foreign capital. They
displayed documentary photographs, project-
ed films, delivered speeches and circulated
a critical study prepared by the collaborating
sociologists. At roughly half-hour intervals the
lights were cut, dramatizing the kinds of infra-
structural failures that were typically endured
by people in the provinces. Bitter coffee was

Opposite: The exhibition, titled both *Thcumån Arde” and "First Avant Garde Art Biennal' took place in the CGT union in Rosario, Argentina, and had an opening
mght attendance of more than 1,000 people. 1b market the exhibition, the collective used street publicity in the form of graffiti and posters with the simple sloaan
ir Ricumån Arde.” (Courtesy Graciela Camevale)

ocumaMRDE

jt? .

- ■....

\ r ir:-' r ' ■ .. f*.". ■ : ■ — v-v-V**'

LIVING AS FORM

served to give the public a taste of the hun¬
ger affecting a cane-growing region where
food, and sugar itself, was in chronically short
supply.

The exhibition strategy was a success. The
opening in Rosario on November 3 attracted
over a thousand people on the first night,
resulting in a prolongation of the show for two
weeks instead of one. It was restaged in Bue¬
nos Aires on November 25, this time including
the covertly produced "Third Cinema" film, La
Hora de los Hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces,
1968), by Octavio Getino and Fernando Sola-
nas, whose projection was halted every half
hour for immediate discussion. The level of
courage implied by this process, under con-
ditions of military rule, is difficult to imagine.
The show in Buenos Aires was censored on
its second day by threats against the union,
exposing the repressive character of the
regime and inviting a further radicalization of
the country s cultural producers.

Because of its collective organization,
its experimental nature, its investigatory pro¬
cess, its tight articulation of analytic and aes-
thetic means, its oppositional stance and its
untimely closure, Tucumån Arde has become
something of a myth in Argentina and abroad.
The American critic Lucy Lippard, who would
later be active in the Art Workers Coalition,
repeatedly claimed that she had been radical-
ized by her meeting with members of the group
on a visit to Argentina in October 1968. 7 The
French journal Robho devoted a dossier to the
work in 1971, emphasizing its break with bour¬
geois art and its revolutionary potentials. In
its more recent reception, which has included
a large number of shows and articles from the
late 1990s on, the project has been linked to
"global conceptualism," and to an interven-
tionist form of media art based on semiotic
analysis. 8 This attention from the museum
world testifies to an intense public interest in
a process that emphasized common speech,
direct action and a break with bourgeois cul¬
tural forms. But that same attention opens
up the questions of absorption, banalization,
neutralization. In the most thoroughly docu-
mented analysis, the Argentine art historian

Ana Longoni vindicates the aims of the project
by asking the obvious disciplinary question:
"Where's the vanguard art in Tucumån Arde?"
She responds: "If Tucumån Arde can be con-
fused with a political act, it is because it was
a political act. The artists had realized a work
that extended the limits of art to zones that did
not correspond, that were external." 9

So what was achieved by the move to
these zones external to art? At a time when
institutional channels were blocked and the
modernizing process had become a dictato-
rial nightmare, the project was able to orches-
trate the efforts of a broad division of cultural
labor, capable of analyzing complex social
phenomena. It then disseminated the results
of this labor through the expressive practices
of an event, in order to produce awareness and
contribute to active resistance. What results
is a change in the finality, or indeed the use-
value, of cultural production. As one statement
indicates, the project was conceived "to help
make possible the creation of an alternative
culture that can form part of the revolutionary
process." 10 Or as the Robho dossier put it: "The
extra imagination found in Tucumån Arde, if
compared for example to the usual agitation
campaign, comes expressly from a practice of,
and a preliminary reflection on, the notions of
event, participation and proliferation of the
aesthetic experience." 11 Thats a perfect defi-
nition of eventwork.

Its effectiveness comes from a perceptual,
analytic and expressive collaboration, which
lends an affective charge to the interpreta-
tion of a real-world situation. Such work is
capable of touching people, of involving them,
not through a retreat to the exalted dreamland
of a white cube, but instead within the every-
day complexity of life in a technocratic soci¬
ety, where the most elusive possibility is that
of shared resistance to the vast, encroach-
ing programs of government and industry. My
question is how to extend that resistance into
the present, how to make it last past each sin-
gular event. Graciela Carnevale, who preserved
this archive of materials at great risk through-
out the Videla dictatorship, said this to me in a
conversation: "There is always a great difficul-

EVENTWORK: THE FOURFOLD MATRIX OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

ty in how to transmit this experience or make
it perceptible, beyond the information about
it." 12 Her dilemma is that of everyone who has
been involved in a significant social move-
ment: "How to share an experience that pro-
duced such great transformations in oneself?"

ACTUALITY

The four vectors of eventwork converge into
action beneath the pressure of injustice and
the anguishing awareness of risk, in situations
where your own discipline, profession or insti-
tution proves incapable of responding, so that
some other course of action must be taken.
"I don't know what to do but l'm gonna do it,"
as my comrades in the Ne Pas Plier collective
used to say. Activism is the making-common
of a desire and a resolve to change the forms
of living, under uncertain conditions, without
any guarantees. When this desire and resolve
can be shared, the intensive assemblage of a
social movement brings both the agonistic and
the utopian dimension into daily experience,
into leisure hours, passionate relations, the
home, the bed, your dreams. It brings public
responsibility into private passion. Thats liv¬
ing as politicalform.

Of course its not supposed to be that way
in modem society, where an institution exists,
in theory at least, to address every need or
problem. Experts manage risks on govern¬
ment time; artists produce the highest subli¬
mat i o n s of entertainment; the media respond
faithfully to popular demands for information;
and social movements are the disciplined
actions of organized laborers seeking higher
wages, all beneath the watchful eye of profes-
sional politicians. Thats the theory, anyway.
This functional division of industrial society
reached its peak of democratic legitimacy in
the decades after WWII, when the Keynesian-
Fordist welfare state claimed to achieve stable
growth, income equality and social benefits for
an expanding "middle class," which included
unionized factory laborers alongside a broad
range of university-trained technicians, ser¬
vice providers and managers. What revealed
itself in 1968 and afterwards, however, was
not just the inability of the industrial state to

go on delivering the goods for that expanding
middle class. What revealed itself, with par-
ticular intensity inside the educational and
cultural circuits made possible by economic
growth, was a shared awareness that the the¬
ory doesn't work, and that despite its suppos-
edly corrective institutions, capitalist modern-
ization itself produces conditions of gendered
and racialized exploitation, neocolonial expro-
priation, mental and emotional manipulation
and ever-worsening environmental pollution.

The sense of a threat lodged within the
utopian promises of Keynesian social democ-
racy and Fordist industrial modernization
was a major motivator for the emergence of
the so-called "new social movements," which
could not be reduced to workplace bargaining
demands and which could not be adequately
conceived within the frameworks of traditional
class analysis. In these movements, to the dis-
may of an older and more doctrinaire political
generation, issues of alienation and therefore
of identity began coming ineluctably to the
fore. 13 The people involved in the civil rights
and antiwar campaigns, and then in a far wider
range of struggles, had to bring new causes,
arenas and strategies of action into some kind
of alignment with thorny questions of percep-
tion knowledge, communication, motivation,
identity, trust, and even self-analysis, all of
which became only more acute as immediate
material necessity receded in the consumer
societies. Artistic expression now appeared
as a necessarily ambiguous mediator between
personal conviction and public representa-
tion. The intersections of theory and daily Ufe
became more dense and entangled, with the
result that each movement, or even each cam-
paign, turned into something original and sur-
prising, the momentary public crystallization
of a singular group process. The simultaneous
inadequacy and necessity of this way of doing
politics has come to define the entire period
of post-Fordism: it is our actuality, our present
tense, at least from a progressive-left perspec-
tive. If an intervention like Tucumån Arde can
still appear familiar, in its modes of organiza-
tion and operation if not in its ideologies and
revolutionary horizons, it's because the basic

LIVING AS FORM

sets of objective and subjective problems
underlying it are still very much with us today.

The similarities and the differences will
come into focus if we think back on one of the

most influential social movements of the post-
Fordist period, which is Al DS activism. I wasn't
part of that movement and I can't bear witness
to its intensities. But what's impressive from a
distance is the collective reaction to a situa-
tion of extreme risk, where the issue is not so
much the technical capacity as the willingness
of a democratic society to respond to dangers
that weigh disproportionately on stigmatized
minorities. Ratherthan widespread police and
military repression, as under a dictatorship, it
is the perception of an intimate threat that lays
the basis for militant action. A totalizing ideo-
logical framework like Marxism can no longer
be counted on to structure this perception.
Instead, subjectivity and daily experience
become crucial. The questions of who you
are, who others think you are, what rights you
are accorded and what rights you are ready to
demand, are all life or death issues, felt and
spontaneously expressed before being formu-
lated and represented. A recent book called
Moving Politics makes clear how much these
affective dimensions mattered, after a thresh-
old of indignation had been crossed and grief
could be transformed into anger. 14 At the micro
level, the "event" could be a glance or a tear in
private, a gesture or a speech in a meeting, no
less than a public action or a media interven-
tion. All these are ways to elicit and modulate
affects, which mobilize activist groups while
exerting a powerful force on others, whether
friends or strangers, elected officials or anon-
ymous spectators.

Yet indignation and rage, along with soli-
darity and love for fellow human beings, can
only be the immediate foundations of a social
movement. Critical research, symbolic expres-
sion, media and self-organization were the
operative vectors for AIDS activism, just as
they had been for a vanguard project like
Tucumån Arde. At first the issues themselves
had to be defined, and they were highly com-
plex, involving the social rights to fund or insti-
gate certain lines of research, to legalize or

ingest certain kinds of medications, to receive
or dispense certain kinds of publicly support-
ed care. Scientific and legal investigations,
often performed by AIDS sufferers, were an
essential part of this effort. 15 At the same time
it became apparent that the rights to treatment
and care were dependent not only on scientific
and legal arguments, but also on the ways that
risk groups were represented in the media, and
on the ways that politicians monitored, solic-
ited or encouraged those representations, so
as to advance their own policies and ensure
their own re-election. 16 The struggle had to
be brought into the fields of education and
cultural production, whose influence on the
structures of feeling and belief should not be
underestimated. But at the same time, it had to
reach into the mass media. This breakthrough
to the media required the staging of striking
events on the ground, often with resources
borrowed from visual art and performance. And
all that entailed the coordination of a far-flung
division of labor under more-or-less anarchic
conditions, where there could be no director,
no hierarchy, no flow chart, etc. To give some
insight into this complex interweave of AIDS
activism, l'd like to quote the art critic and
activist Douglas Crimp, in an interview with
Tina Takemoto:

Crimp: Within ACT UP, there was a
sophistication about the uses of rep-
resentation for activist politics. This
awareness came not only from people
who knew art theory but also from
people who worked in public relations,
design, and advertising... So ACT UP
was a weird hybrid of traditional left-
ist politics, innovative postmodern
theory, and access to professional
resources... One of the most emblem-
atic images associated with ACT UP
was the SILENCE=DEATH logo, com-
posed of a simple pink triangle on a
black background with white sans
serif type. This image was created by a
group of gay designers who organized
the Silence=Death Project before ACT
UP even started. Although they didn't

design the logo for ACT UP, they lent

back to the larger, trans-generational question

it to the movement, and it was used on

of eventwork, exactly as Graciela Carnevale

T-shirts as an official emblem. 17

expressed it: "How to share an experience

that produced such great transformations in

Here again, what lends resonance to the event

oneself?"

is the difference of the people involved, and

Speaking from my own experience, l've

therefore of the techniques and knowledges

also participated in a large movement, or real-

they are able to bring to bear, whenever they

ly a constellation of social movements, the

find the inspiration or the need or the cour-

global justice movements opposing financially

age to overstep their disciplinary boundaries

driven globalization. Starting around 1994

and start to work at odds with the dominant

they arose across the earth: in Mexico, India,

functions. That all of this should only become

France, Britain, the US, etc. From the begin-

possible under the menace of illness and the

ning these movements interacted very exten-

directthreat of death is, 1 think, of the essence:

sively, first through labor, NGO and anarchist

it's not something one should avoid or shirk

networks, then in counter-summits mounted

away from. Social movements arise and spread

in the face of the transnational institutions

in the face of existential threats. Whats at

such as the WTO and the IMF, then through

issue then, in our blinkered and controlled and

the veritable popular universities constitut-

self-satisfied societies, is the perception of a

ed by the World Social Forums. The people 1

threat and the modulation of affect in the face

worked with, mainly in Europe but also in the

of it—or in other words, the way you rupture a

Americas, were able to twist or subvert some

cultural pattern, the way you motivate yourself

of the utopian energies of the Internet boom,

and others to undertake a course of action.

combining them with labor struggles, ecologi-

This paradoxical figure of a social solidarity

cal movements and indigenous demands to

founded on an experience of rupture brings us

create a political response to corporate global-

Above: Members of Philadelphia‘s chapter of ACT UP protest about the global AIDS epidemic at the U.N. in April 2011 (Photograph by Kaytee Riek).

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EVENTWORK THE FOURFOLD MATRIX OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

ization. In the course of these movements, the
relations between critical and philosophical
investigation, artistic processes, direct action
and tactical media opened up a vast new field
of practice, more vital than anything I had pre-
viously known. The Argentine insurrection of
December 2001 was a culminating moment
of this global cycle of struggles; and for those
involved with art, not only the history but also
the actuality of social movements in Argen¬
tina seemed to confirm the idea that aesthetic
activity could be placed into a new framework,
one that was no longer freighted with the strict
separations of the modernist institutions. 18 All
this convinced me that contemporary art in its
most challenging and experimental forms has
indeed been suffering from the "cultural con-
finement" that Robert Smithson diagnosed
long ago, and that its real possibilities unfold
on more engaging terrains, whose access has
mostly been foreclosed by the institutional
frameworks of museums, galleries, magazines,
university departments, etc. 19 The concept of
eventwork is based directly on these experi-
ences with contemporary social movements,
which have generated important cooperative
and communicational capacities and helped
to revitalize left political culture.

Its obvious, however, that the global jus-
tice movements were not able to overturn the
ruling consensus on capitalist development
and economic growth. In fact the recent finan-
cial crisis has both vindicated the arguments
we began making as much as fifteen years ago,
and also shown those arguments to be politi-
cally powerless, incapable of contributing to
any concrete change. A similar verdiet was
delivered to environmental activists by the
debacle of the Copenhagen climate summit.

All of that fits into a larger pattern. If I had
to offer a one-sentence version of what l've
learned about society since 1994, it might go
like this: "The entire edifice of speculative,
computer-managed, gentrifying, militarized,
over-polluted, just-in-time, debt-driven neo-
liberal globalization has taken form, since the
early '80s, as a way to block the institutional
changes that were first set into motion by
the new social movements of the '60s-'70s."

In other words, cultural confinement does
not just affect experimental art, as Smithson
seems to have believed. Instead it applies to
all egalitarian, emancipatory and ecological
aspirations in the post-Fordist period, which
now reveals itself to be a period of pure cri¬
sis management, one that has not produced
any fundamental Solutions to the problems of
industrial modernization, but has only export-
ed them aeross the earth. Yet those problems
are serious, they have accumulated on every
level. Whats the use of aesthetics if you don't
have eyes to see? It would not be a metaphor
to say that the United States, in particular, has
been living on credit since the outset of the
post-Fordist period; and now, slowly but inexo-
rably, the bill is coming due.

PERSPECTIVES

The question l've tried to raise is this: how do
cultural practices become political acts? Or
to put it more sharply: how does the operative
force of a cultural activity, or indeed of a dis-
cipline, somehow break through the normative
and legal limits imposed by a profession? How
to create an institutional context that offers a
chance of mutual recognition and validation
for people attempting to give their particular
ski lis and practices a broader meaning and a
greater effectiveness?

These questions can be framed, in an
inversing mirror, by an image from the wave of
protest that swept over the state of Wisconsin
in the face of Governor Scott Walkers ultimate-
ly successful bid to impose an austerity plan
that ineludes an end to the right of collective
bargaining. The image is a protest snap from
someones digital camera, reproduced widely
on the web. 20 It shows a middle-class white
woman standing in front of an American flag,
next to a Beaux-Arts statue. She holds a sign
in her hands that says in bold Capital letters:

I AM NOTREPLACEABLE

I AM PROFESSIONAL

Who is this woman? An artist? A curator?
An art historian? A cultural critic? Why does
she proclaim her security in this way? Does

Opposite: The 2011 World Social Forum took place in Dakar, Senegal from February 6-11, and had 75,000 participants from 132 countries. The World Social Forum
is an annual meeting of eivil society organizations opposed to globalization. (Photographs by Manoel Santos) ,

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EVENTWORK: THE FOURFOLD MATRIX OF CONTEMFORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

she still have a job? Does she still have rights?
And how about ourselves? Where do our rights
come from? How are they maintained? How are
they produced?

It seems to me that in the United States
right now, as in other countries, there is a
rising feeling of existential threat. Endless
warfare, invasive surveillance, economic pre-
cariousness, intensified exploitation of the
environment, increasing corruption: all these
mark the entry into an era of global tension
whose like has not been seen since the 1930s.
As economic collapse continues and climate
change becomes more acute, these dangers
will become far more concrete; and we urgently
need to prepare for the moments when adher-
ence to a social movement becomes inevi-
table. Yet it appears that laws, ethical codes
and the requirements of professionalism in
all-absorbing, highly competitive careers, still
make it impossible for most Americans to find
the time, the place, the medium, the format,
the desire and above all the collective will
that would help them to resist the threats. This
reminds us of what Thoreau taught in his time,
namely that being a Citizen of a democratic
country means always being on the edge of
starting a revolution. Something about our
forms of living and working has to change, not
just aesthetically and not just in theory, but
pragmatically, in terms of the kinds of activity
and their modes of organization. 21 Or as Doug
Ashford once put it, "Civil disobedience is an
art history, too." 22

This essay was written in the summer of
2011, while major social movements continued
to unfold across Europe and the Middle East,
and a dead calm weighed on the U.S. As we go
to press, the game has changed. Hundreds of
thousands of people across the country have
taken to the streets, set up encampments in
public squares, and are activating all the social,
intellectual, and cultural resources at their dis-
posal in order to carry out a deep and search-
ing critique of inequality. Alongside organizers,
researchers, and media activists, artists have
played a role, which continues to expand as
more people overstep the boundaries of their
disciplinary identities. Social movements come

in great waves, generating unpredictable conse-
quences: no one knows what this one will leave
behind. But the inspiration of Wisconsin has
been fulfilled and its paradoxes have been over¬
come. Floating above crowds across the country,
a very different sign could be seen, pointing to
what now appears to be a precarious destiny:

LOST A JOB, FOUND AN OCCUPATION

ENDNOTES

1 Félix Cuattari, Chaosmosis: an EthicoAesthetic Paradigm (Indiana University Press,
1995): 25.

2 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modemity (London: Sage, 1992, lst
Cerman edition 1986).

3 The most striking example of this self-critique in the social Sciences is the reaction
of anthropologists to their discipline's participation in the Vietnam War; see for
example Dell Hymes, ed., Reinventing Anthropology (New York: Random House, 1972).

4 Leon Ferrari, "The Art of Meanings” (1968) in lnés Katzenstein, ed., Listen Here Now!
Argentine Art of the 1960s: Wntmgs of the Avante-Garde (New York: MoMA, 2004): 312.

5 Four typescripts of texts delivered at this meeting are preserved in the archive of
Craciela Carnevale; they are the sorces for this paragraph. Three of them (including
the one by Le6n Ferrari quoted above) are translated in Listen Here Now! ibid.: 306-18;
the fourth, by Nicolås Rosa, is reproduced in Spanish in Ana Longoni and Mariano
Mestman, Del Di Tblla a "Tucumån Arde”: l&nguardia artlstica y politica en el 68
argentine (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2008): 174-78.

6 See Maria Tferesa Cramuglio and Nicolås Rosa, "TUcumån Arde" (1968), declaration
circulated at the Rosario exhibition, reproduced in Del Di Tblla a Tucumån Arde, ibid.:
233-35. The text is translated under the title '"IUcuman Bums" in Alexander Alberro
and Blake Stimson, eds., ConceptualArt: A CriticalAnthology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1999): 76-79; but circuito sobreinformacional is rendered as "informational
circuit, 11 losing a crucial emphasis.

7 Concerning Lippard's visit to Argentina and her declarations, see Julia Bryan-Wilson,
Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2009): 132-38.

8 See Mari Carmen Ramirez, "Thctics for Thriving on Adversity: Conceptualism in Latin
America, 1960-1980,“ in Luis Camnitzer, Jane Farver and Rachel Weiss, eds., Global
Conceptualism: Points of Origin: 19S0s-1980s, (New York: Queens Museum of
Modem Art, 1999) and Alex Alberro, “A Media Art: Conceptual Art in Latin America,"
in Michael Newman and Jon Bird, eds., Rewriting Conceptual Art (London: Reaktion
Books, 1999). Another important book is Andrea Ciunta, Avant-Garde, Intemationalism,
and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007),
Among major exhibitions featuring the archive of Tucumån Arde are Global Concepi-
tualism (Queens, 1999) Ex Argentina (Berlin, 2003);Documentø 12 (Kassel, 2007); and
Forms ofResistance (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2007-2008). A copy of the archive
of Tucumån Arde has been acquired by the MacBa in Barcelona.

9 Ana Longoni and Mariano Mestman, Del Di Tblla a Tucumån Arde : 216.

10 "Frente a los acontecimientos polfticos." unsigned doeument in the archive of

Craciela Carnevale (2 pages), apparently a sketch for a broadside to be distributed
at the Rosario exhibition.

11 "Dossier Argentine: Les fils de Marx et de Mondrian," Robho no. 5-6, Paris, 1971: 16,

12 Conversation with Craciela Carnevale, Rosario, Argentina, April 11, 2011.

13 For the concept of "new social movements" and a review of the most prominent
theories about them, see Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani, Social Movements:
An Tntroduction, 2d edition (London: Blackwell, 2006): chap. 1.

14 Deborah B. Could, Moving Politics: Emotion andAct Up's Fight against AIDS
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

15 See Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996),

16 See Douglas Crimp, ed., AIDS: CulturalAnatysisfCultural Activism (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1988).

17 Tina låkemoto, "The Melancholia of AIDS: Interview with Douglas Cnmp," Art
Journal, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 2003): 83.

18 For the role of artists in Argentine social movements, see Brian Holmes, "Remember
the Present: Representations of Crisis in Argentina, in Escape the Overcode: Artistic
Activism in the Control Society (WHW: Van Abbemuseum, Zagreb and Eindhoven,
2009); also available at http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/04/28/remernber-
the-present. For a book that literally attempts to rewrite the history of contemporary
art on the basis of Tlicumån Arde, see Luis Camnitzer, Conceptualism m Latin
American Art: Didactics of Liberation (Ttexas: University of Texas Press, 2007).

19 Robert Smithson, "Cultural Confmement" (1972), in Nancy Holt, ed. The Writings of
Robert Smithson (New York: NYU Press, 1979).

20 See among many other blogs and websites, http://thepragmaticprogressive.org/
wp/2011/02/19/a-letter-ffom-a-union-maid-in-wisconsm (accessed 07/11/11).

21 This is exactly the conclusion of Dan S. Wang and Nicolås Lampert, "Wisconsiris
Lost Strike Moment,” at http://www.justseeds.org/blog/2011/04/wisconsins_lost_
strike_moment_l .html.

22 Doug Ashford and 36 others, Who Cares (New York: Creative Time Books, 2006): 29.

Opposite: Protesters gathered in Madison, Wisconsin to protest provisions of Governor Walkeris Budget Repair Bill that undermine the power of public sector
unions (Photograph by Richard Hurd). The Wisconsin Pro Workers Rally occupied the Capitol Building in Madison, Wisconsin on February 19, 2011 (Photograph
by Cynthia Hollenberger).

UVING TAKES
MAHYFORMS

SHANNON JACKSON

LIVING TAKES MANY FORMS

"THE POWER OF THE£E THEATERS SPRING-
ING UP THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY UES
IN THE FACT THAT THEY KNOW WHAT
THEY WANT.... THEY INTEND TO REMAKE
A SOCIAL STRUCTURE WITHOUT THE
HELP OF MONEY—AND THIS AMBITION
ALONEINVESTSTHEIR UNDERTAKING

WITH A CERTAIN

MADNESS.”

MARLOWESQUE

This was Hallie Flanagan, director of the Fed-
eral Theatre Project (FTP), one part of the
Works Progress Administration that was so
central to implementing Franklin Delano Roo-
sevelts New Deal. She was recalling her work
as the leader of a federally supported theatri-
cal movement charged with responding to the
reality of the Great Depression. The Federal
Theatre Project addressed timely themes with
new plays that dramatized issues of housing,
the privatization of Utilities, agricultural labor,
unemployment, racial and religious intoler-
ance, and more. And the FTP devised inno¬
vative theatrical forms—stag ing newspapers,
developing montage stagecraft, and opening
the same play simultaneously in several cities
at once. The goal was to extend the theatrical
event to foreground the systemic connected-
ness of the issues endured. Social and eco-
nomic hardships were not singular problems
but collective ones; as such, they needed a
collective aesthetic. Like other Works Progress
Administration (WPA) culture workers—its

writers, its mural painters, its photographers—
FTP artists used interdependent art forms as
vehicles for reimagining the interdependen-
cy of social beings. They gave public form to
public life.

As we think about the twenty years of work
represented in Living as Form, we should also
remember prior histories of socially engaged
art, such as the Federal Theatre Project. To do
so is to remember that now is not the first time
an international financial crisis threatened to
imperil the vitality of civic cultures; it is also
to acknowledge that the effects of economic
crises and economic prosperity vary, depend-
ing upon what global, demographic position
• one occupies. From Saint Petersburg, Russia
' to Harare, Zimbabwe, from Los Angeles, Cali-
‘ fornia to Glover, Vermont, booms and busts
have been socially produced and differentially
felt. Accordingly, artists dispersed amorig dif¬
ferent global sites face unique and complex
economies as they develop cultural responses

LIVING AS fORM

to social questions around education, public
welfare, urban life, immigration, environmen-
talism, gender and racial equity, human rights,
and democratic governance. Those economies
are now distinctively "mixed" in our "post-
1989" era, less fueled by the Cold War's capi-
talism/communism opposition than by Third
Way experimentation whose allegiances to
public culture are as opaque and variable as
its allegiances to public Services. 2 As artists
reflect upon these and other social trans-
formations, they also reckon with the mixed
socioeconomic models that support art itself.
Artists based in Europe can still seek national
arts funding, but groups such as The Mobile
Academy or Free Class Frankfurt might worry
about the encroachment of neoliberal mod¬
els that chip away at the principles behind it.
Public sector funding interfaces with other
financial models. Some artists seek commis-
sions, and others depend on royalties. Others
seil documentation of socially engaged work
in galleries, joining the likes of Phil Collins,
Thomas Hirschhorn, Paul Chan, or Francis
Alys whose political practices enjoy art world
cachet. Still other artists such as Mierle Lader-
man Ukeles or Rick Lowe mobilize social sec¬
tor initiatives in service of the arts, transform-
ing after-school programs, public sanitation,
or urban recovery projects into aesthetic acts.
Finally, people like Josh Greene sidestep larg-
er systemic processes, choosing to develop
micro-DIY networks of shared artistic support
instead. But whether you are organizing pot-
lucks to combat the effects of Turkey's Deep
State, responding to a coalition government's
equivocal faith in the culture industries of the
United Kingdom, or celebrating the release
from social realism by speculating in Chinas
booming art market, there is no pure position
for socially engaged artmaking.

To recall the Federal Theatre Project inside of
the WPA is not only to prompt reflection on
changing socioeconomic contexts, but also
to reflect upon the varied art forms from which
social engagement springs. The WPA expand-
ed the practice of photographers, architects,
easel painters, actors, designers, dancers,

and writers, and the Living as Form archive
includes practices that measure their expan-
sion from other art forms as well. The installa-
tions of Phil Collins sit next to the community
theater of Cornerstone. The choreography of
Urban Bush Women moves nearthe expanded
photography of Ala Plåstica.

But even if the WPA moment is a remind-
er that socially engaged work develops from
a range of art traditions, the willingness to
capture the heterogeneity of contemporary
work is striking and unfortunately rare. Across
the world, artists and institutions celebrate
"hybrid" work. However, such hybrid artists
still measure their distance from traditional art
disciplines, and their conversations and sup¬
port networks often remain circumscribed by
them. In other words, expanded theater artists
talk to other expanded theater artists and are
presented by an international festival circuit.
Post-visual artists talk to other post-visual art¬
ists and are represented in the biennial circuit
and by the gallery-collector system. The hab-
its of criticism reinforce this inertia, routinely
structuring who is east as post-Brechtian and
who is east as post-Minimalist. It is hard to
find contexts that enable conversation across
these networks using critical vocabularies.
Certainly, the difficulty is due in part to the
wide range of skills new art forms require.
Not everyone knows how to design a house or
produce a film. Not everyone can fabricate a
three-story puppet to be graceful or inscribe
African diasporic history in a simple rotation
of the hips; so it makes sense when archi¬
tects, videographers, puppeteers, and chore-
ographers seek out conversations with fellow
specialists. But the necessity of creating plat-
forms that stitch together the heterogeneous
project of socially engaged art remains—and
continues to become increasingly urgent.
Meanwhile, genuinely cross-disciplinary art¬
ists should not to have to cultivate some tal-
ents and repress others in order to conform to
particular legitimating contexts. It would be
nice, for instance, if Theaster Gates did not
have to choose between standing in a gospel
choir or sitting at his potter's wheel.

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Thus, the challenge of Living as Form lies in
its invitation to contemplate what living means
in our contemporary moment, and to reckon
with the many kinds of forms that help us to
reflect. That challenge is itself embedded in
different barometers for gauging aesthetic
integrity and social efficacy. The question of
arts social role has been a hallmark of Western
twentieth-century aesthetic debate—whether
sociality is marked by eruptions at Café Vol-
taire or by the activisms of 1968, whether it is
called Constructivist or Situationist, realist or
relational, functional or (after Adorno) "com-
mitted." 3 Russias Chto Delat's renewal of Len-
ins historie question, "What is to be done?" is
both an earnest call and a gesture that renders
the question an artifact by asking what "doing"
could possibly mean in a twenty-first century
global context. Their pursuit resonates with
that of choreographer Bill T. Jones who finds
himself recalibrating his sense of the role of

politics in art. "I now choose to fire back that
'political' is an exhausted term and most cer-
tainly more and more irrelevant in regard to my
work. To make a work that says, 'War is bad!'
is absurd. I find myself saying with growing
confidence that the works that I make now
are concerned with moral choice, as in, 'What
is the right thing to do, particularly when we
seem to have many choices and no real choice
at all?"' 4

Even if ethical and pragmatic questions of
"doing" activate contemporary art, modernist
legaeies of thought and practice carry forward
habits of enthusiasm and suspicion. Those
habits determine whether work is deemed
subversive or instrumentalized—whether it
looks efficacious or like "the end of art." Artist
groups such as Alternate Roots are quite clear
in their desire to craft aesthetic Solutions to
social problems. Meanwhile, Hannah Hurtzig's
The Mobile Academy worries more about the

Above: Workers carry sandwich boards bearing language from Bertolt Brechfs "In Praise of Dialectics" (Courtesy Chto Delat?).

ossification of goal-driven "knowledge," ironi-
cally hoping to create "a tool to find problems
for already existing Solutions." 5 To some, Cor-
nerstoneTheaters mission statement provides
necessary inspiration: "We value art that is
contemporary, community-specific, respon-
sive, multi-lingual, innovative, challenging,
and joyful. We value theater that directly
reflects the audience. We value the artist in
everyone." 6 To others, such a "mission" risks
social prescription. These critical tussles
depend upon how each receiver understands
the place of art. Should art mobilize the world
or continually question the reality principles
behind its formation? Should art unsettle
the bonds of social life or seek to bind social
beings to each other? Acts of aesthetic affir-
mation coincide with equally necessary acts
of aesthetic refusal. But as we come to terms
with hybrid forms of socially engaged art, no
doubt every citizen will find herself jostled
between competing and often contradictory
associations that celebrate and reject varied

visions of the "social." This is a matter of what
we used to call "taste," a regime of sensibility
that we like to pretend we have overcome. Nev-
ertheless, our impulses to describe a work as
ironic or earnest, elitist or as literal, critical or
sentimental show that many of us have emo-
tional as well as conceptual investments in
certain barometers for gauging aesthetic inter-
vention and aesthetic corruption. Such differ-
ences will also affect how each of us assesses
the role of functionality, utility, and intelligi-
bility in a socially engaged work. Jeremy Del-
ler's reenactments in "The Battle of Orgreave"
may look radically functional to some of us
and curiously useless to others. On the other
hand, Francis Alys' works may seem strangely
unintelligible to one group but overly didactic
to another.

Reactions to socially engaged art thus renew
historie questions around the perceived auton-
omy and heteronomy of art, whether it should
be "self-governing" or commit to governance

Above: At Mobile Academy's Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non■ Knowledge No S: Encyclopedia of Dance Gestures and Applied Movements in
Humans, Animals and Matter at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2005, up to 100 experts shared their knowledge with participants in half-hour increments
(Photograph by Thomas Aurin).

LIVING TAKES MANY FORMS

by "external rules." As many have argued, that
opposition always cracks under pressure.
Arguments in favor of aesthetic autonomy
disavow their enmeshment in privatized art
markets. Arguments in favor of aesthetic het-
eronomy backtrack when "the artists freedom
of speech" seems threatened. But as specious
as the opposition is, questions of perceived
aesthetic autonomy and heteronomy affect
our relative tolerance for the goals, skills, and
styles of different art forms. The legacy of anti-
theatricaldiscourses in modernistartcriticism
offers a case in point. Many signature Mini-
malist gestures purportedly laid the ground-
work for contemporary social engagement: for
example, the turn to time-based work, the entry
of the body of the artist, the explicit relation
to the beholder, the avowal of the spatial and
institutional conditions of production. 7 Such
gestures were criticized in their time for being
"theatrical," and arguably the pejorative con-
notations of that term linger in the many criti-
cisms and defenses of the formal properties of
social practice now. However, such a discourse
was less potent for artists who actually worked
in theater and other performing arts, people for
whom time, bodies, space, and audience were
already incorporated into the traditions of the
medium. Thus, for socially engaged theater
producers and choreographers, the effort was
not to introduce such properties—they were
already there—but to alter the conventions by
which such properties were managed. It meant
that time might not be narrative, that bodies
might not be characters, and that space could
exceed the boundaries of the proscenium. It
meant that people like Augusto Boal would
seek to dynamize the audience relation into a
new kind of "spect-actor." 8

If we then bring work that derives from
theatrical, visual, architectural, textual, and
filmic art forms under the umbrella of "socially
engaged art," it seems important to register
their different barometers for gauging skill,
goal, style, and innovation. We might call this
the "medium-specificity" of social engage¬
ment. The performing bodies of political the¬
ater may not be traditional characters, but to
a sculptor, they still appear to be acting. The

installation art piece may exceed the con-
straints of the picture frame, but to an envi-
ronmental theater producer, it still appears
relatively hermetic. Postdramatic theater may
be non-narrative, but to a post-visual artist, it
looks exceedingly referential. In other words,
our enmeshment in certain art forms will affect
how we perceive tradition and innovation in a
work. It will also affect how we understand its
social reach, its functionality, and its relative
intelligibility. What reads as earnest to a Con-
ceptual artist will look snobby to a community
organizer. Heteronomous engagement in one
art form looks highly autonomous to another.
But the harder work comes in a willingness to
think past these initial judgment calls. Who
is to say that the feminist content of Suzanne
Lacys projects on rape prevents them from
getting formal credit for being a "Happening"?
Who is to say that there isn't a radical refusal
of social convention in Cornerstones notion
that there is "an artist in everyone?" Finally,
the cultural location of specific artists will
influence their definitions of what qualifies as
social. I am reminded of Urban Bush Women
founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's reflections on
the subject: "I don't know that I could make a
work that is not about healing. What would that
be about? Being? Well, you know, it's interest-
ing, a European director said to me... you know,
your work is old-fashioned because you have
this obsession with hope ... and I said, you
know the values in my community that I have
also internalized are that. So no, its not about
nihilism for me or this train-spotting angst. No,
that's not my culture. So it can be corny to you.
Thats fine." 9

Once we develop a tolerance for different
ways of mixing artistic Forms, however, we can
get to the inspiring work of seeing how they
each address the problems and possibilities of
Living. The Works Progress Administration—
like other instances of public, nonprofit, and
privately funded efforts at civic culture—knew
something about the making of life. At a time
of fiscal danger, the arts were not positioned
as ornamental and expendable, but as central
vehicles for reimagining the social order. Exist-
ing economic and social structures did not

remain intact, contracting and expanding with
the decrease or increase in financial flows.
I nstead, it was a time when various social sec-
tors underwent redefinition and engaged in
significant cross-training. Sectors in the arts,
health care, housing, commerce, urban plan-
ning, sanitation, education, science, and child
development received joint provisions that
required collaboration. It meant health policy,
advanced educational policy, and cultural pol¬
icy, all in the same moment. It meant that citi-
zens were not asked to choose between sup-
porting employment programs or supporting
arts programs, as both sectors were reimag-
ined together. In theater, journalists became
playwrights, WPA laborers became actors, and
public utility companies hung the lights. But
this interdependent social imagining was not
without its own dangers, especially when such
forms of imagining were retroactively east as
politically corrupt. The statement from Hallie

Flanagan that opened this essay was quoted
when she was brought before the Dies Com-
mittee who argued that her directorship of an
arts-based American relief program had been,
in fact, un-American. "You are quoting from
this Marlowe," noted Dies Committee member
Joe Starnes. "Is he a communist?" 10

The history lesson shows the potential
and peril of coordinating public forms of aes-
thetic inquiry. Funny how acts of citizenship
suddenly become unpatriotic once under the
rubric of art. In our contemporary moment, we
tend to use the word "neoliberal" to describe
moral regimes based on highly individuated
and market-driven measures for determining
value. And the ease with which the privatized
financial crisis of 2008 transmogrified into a
national and global distrust of public systems
shows how robust the psychic as well as finan¬
cial investment in neoliberalism aetually is. I
thus find myself emboldened by artists who

Above: For Touch Sanitation, Mierle Laderman Ukeles shook hands with 8,500 NYC Sanitation workers (Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York).

LIVING TAKES MANy FORMS

continue to renew our understanding of what
cross-sector collaboration can be, even if they
alsoremind usthatitishard to do. Mierle Lader-
man Ukeles has worked across the domains of
art and public sanitation for decades, but her
artist-in-residence position remains unpaid.
Moreover, as Rick Lowe reminds us, cross-
sector collaboration means re-skilling: "I have
to keep trying to allow myself the courage to
do it, you know, because as we open ourselves
up and look around, there are many opportuni-
ties to invest that creativity. But its challeng-
ing. Oftentimes, as an artist, you're trespass-
ing into different zones.... Oftentimes... I know
nothing. I have to force myself and find courage
to trespass.... Artists can license ourselves to
explore in any way imaginable. The challenge
is having the courage to carry it through." 11 It is
of course in that trespassing that art makes dif¬
ferent zones of the social available for critical
reflection. Cross-sector engagement exposes
and complicates our awareness of the systems
and processes that coordinate and sustain
social life. For my own part, this is where social
art becomes rigorous, conceptual, and formal.
The non-monumental gestures of such public
art works address, mimic, subvert, and rede-
fine public processes, provoking us to reflect
upon what kinds of forms—be they aesthetic,
social, economic, or governmental—we want
to sustain a life worth living. Whether occupy-
ing an abandoned building, casting new Tig-
ures as public sector workers, or rearranging
the gestural gait of the street, such aesthetic
projects embed and rework the infrastructures
of the social. This is where the notion that liv¬
ing has a form gains traction. Living here is not
the emptied, convivial party of the relational.
Nor is it the romantically unmediated notion of
"life" whose generalized spontaneity Boomers
still elegize. By reminding us that living is form,
these works remind us of the responsibility for
creating and recreating the conditions of life.
Form here is both socially urgent and atask for
an aesthetic imaginary. Living does not just
"happen," but is, in fact, actively produced.

In the end, the stakes of maintaining a
robust and bracing public culture are too dear
for us not to cultivate awareness and respect

for the many ways that fellow artists contribute
to the effort. Our conceptions of expanded art
need to stay expansive. In Living as Form we
find a tool to help us widen awareness. It is a
tool that invites discussion of what form might
mean. It is a tool that invites discussion of
what living could mean—for future occupants
of a world full of potential and in need of repair.

ENDNOTES

1 Roy Rosenzweig and Barbara Melosh, "Government and the Arts: Voices from the
New Deal Era," The Journal of American History (September 1990): 596.

2 Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Gambridge,
U.K.:Polity Press, 1998).

3 The secondary hterature here is vast, but see, for example, RoseLee Goldberg,
Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, 2 nd edition (New York: Thames &
Hudson, 2001); Maria Gough, The Artist as Producer: Russian Constructivism in
Revolution (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006); Tom McDonough, ed., The Situationists
and the City (London: Verso, 2010). And of course, Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic
Theory, Robert Hullot-Kentor, trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).

4 Bill T. Jones, ‘"PoliticaT Work?," (October 4, 2006) at www.billtjones.org/billsblog/
2006/10/political_work.htm.

5 Quoted in Bojana Gvejic, “Trickstering, Hallucinating, and Exhausting Production:

The Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Khowledge," Knowledge in
Motion, Sabine Gehm, Pirrko Husemann, Katharina vone Wilcke, eds. (Bielefeld:
Transcript Verlag, 2007): 54.

6 Gornerstone Theater, Mission and Values, http://www.cornerstonetheater.org/

(July 2011).

7 Once again, the conversation around Minimalism and theatncality is a long one, but
see for instance, Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood," Artforum Qune 1967); James
Meyer, Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2001); Hal Foster, "The Gruxof Minimalism," in The Retum of the Real
(Gambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).

8 Augusto Boal, Theater of the Oppressed. Gharles A. and Maria-Odilia Leal
McBrid, trans. (New York: Theatre Gommunications Group, 1985).

9 Jawole Willa Jo Zollar quoted in Nadine George-Graves, Urban Bush Women:
TwentyYears of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and
Working it Out, (Madison: University of Wisconsm Press, 2010): 204.

10 This story is oft-recounted. See, for instance, Roy Rosenzweig and Barbara Melosh,
"Government and the Arts: Voices from the New Deal Era," The Journal of American
History (September 1990): 596; Tfed Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century
America (New York: Random House, 2003): 198.

11 Greg Sholette, “Activism as Art: Shotgun Shacks Saved Through Art-Based
Revitalization: Intemew with Rick Lowe," Huffington Post (November 22, 2010).

!■ INGA

■

PROJbCTS

LIVING AS FORM

Al WEIWEI

FAIRYTALE: 1,001
CHINESE VISITORS

2007

For his contribution to Documenta 12 in
Kassel, Germany, artist Ai Weiwei brought to town
1,001 residents of China during the well-known
art fair. With $4.14 million from funding sources
such as Documentas sponsors, three Swiss foun-
dations, as well as the German Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Ai arranged all aspects of travel. He paid
for airfare, processed visa applications, refur-
bished an old textile mill into a temporary hostel,
transported Chinese chefs to cook meals, de-
signed travel items such as clothing and luggage,
and organized tours of Kassel's landmarks. He
also installed 1,001 antique chairs throughout the
exhibition pavilion to represent the Chinese par-
ticipants' presence in Kassel. His visitors acted as
both tourists and subjects of his art—viewers of a
foreign culture, as well as signs of another.

Within three days of advertising the free trip
on his blog. Ai received 3,000 applications. He
privileged those with limited resources or travel
restrictions; for example, women from a farming
village, who lacked proper identity cards, were
able to obtain government-issued travel docu-
ments for the first time. Other participants includ-
ed laid-off workers, police officers, children, street
vendors, students, farmers, and artists. They ar-
rived en masse. However, Ai solicited their indi¬
vidual voices through filmed interviews with each
traveler, and also a lengthy questionnaire—99
questions—that focused on personal histories,
desires, and fantasies.

Kassel is best known as home to the Brothers
Grimm, famed collectors of fables from the region.
Ai named his project Fairytale in reference to their
tales, and as a nod to the spirit of the trip, which
likelyfelt mythicalto many of the tourists, who had
perhaps never before dreamed of leaving China.

r »

*ij 4*8

Top to bottom: Video stilis from Ai’s Fairytale show the Chinese visitors partak-
mg in Documenta 12 (Courtesy Ai Weiwei).

PROJECTS

LIVING AS FORM

ALA PLASTICA

MAGDALENA OIL SPILL

1999-2003

A month after a Shell Oil tank and a German
ship collided in Argentinas Rio de la Plata, art-
ists Silvina Babich and Alejandro Meitin began
walking along the damaged coast, photograph-
ing stained, drenched birds, and pools of indigo
liquid collected in buckets and marshes along the
riverbank. Over 5,300 tons of oil spilled into the
fresh water estuary, which is close to the town
Magdelena and the Parque Costero del Sur, a
wildlife refuge considered a biosphere reserve by
UNESCO. Babich and Meitin collaborate under
the name Ala Plåstica; working together as envi-

ronmental activists, they produced photographs,
notes, and other documentation—from satellite
imagery to maps—to build a case for both repair to
the ecosystem and reparations to the community.
"We [wanted to] reclaim the strip of land Shell was
trying to close down," says Meitin, an artist and
lawyer, "and inform people about what was really
happening in that place."

Since 1991, Ala Plåstica has worked with
artists, environmentalists, government agencies,
and scientiststo study rivers in Argentina. Forthis
project, the group organized a team of researchers
that included junqueros (reed harvesters), scien-
tists, naturalists, journalists, activists, and other
artists to weigh in on the impact, prescribe So¬
lutions for aggressive clean-up measures, and
present their findings in local and global forums.
In 2002, in collaboration with other lobbying
groups such as Friends of the Earth and Global
Community Monitor, they co-wrote "Failing the
Challenge, The Other Shell Report," and pre-
sented it to Annual Shareholders Assembly of the
company in London. In that same year, the coun¬
try^ Supreme Court ruled in favor of a $35 million
cleanup of the river's coastline.

Above; This image, Last Reed Harvest, documents the impacts of the oil spill
on the human and natural communities of Magdalena, Argentina ( Photograph
by Rafael Santos).

PROJECTS

Top to bottom: Reed harvesters speak to members of the community in Mag-
dalena about the Shell oil spill (Photograph by Thomas Minich), The group
surveys damage along Rio de la Plata’s coastline caused by the Shell oil spill
(Photograph by Fernando Massobrio).

100

LIVING AS FORM

JENNIFER ALLORA AND
CUILLERMO CALZADILLA

TIZA (LIMA)

1998-2006

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla
placed twelve five-foot columns of chalk in public
squares in Lima, Paris, and New York, ephemeral
public monuments that would crumble and dis-
solve over time into smaller pieces and pools of
liquid. The artists then invited people to use the
fallen pieces of chalk to write messages on the
ground, doodle, or express themselves in any
fashion they chose, thereby transforming the ma¬
terial decay into a fleeting opportunity for Creative
expression. In Lima, Allora and Calzadilla placed
the chalk columns directly in front of government
offices, which incited passersbytoconvertthead-

jacent ground into a large, makeshift blackboard
overflowing with messages intended to critique
the state. This activity evolved into an impromptu,
peaceful protest as people gathered in the square,
waving banners and hoisting posters above their
heads. Eventually, military officers, who were
standing by in shields and helmets, confiscated
the chalk, and washed away the incendiary politi-
cal statements.

Puerto Rico-based Allora and Calzadilla rep-
resented the United States in this years Venice
Biennale—the first performance artists, and artist
collaborative, to do so. Since the late 1990s, the
artists have often explored the act of mark making,
and the ways in which temporary actions can yield
permanent effects. For their Land Mark series,
the artists worked with activists on the Puerto
Rican island Viesques to consider how land is
marked, literally and figuratively, and by whom.
For decades, the U.S. military practiced bombing
and tested chemical warfare technologies in the
area, while protesters would break into the range
to disrupt activity. Allora and Calzadilla provided
them with rubber shoes that would imprint the
ground as they ran across the range, thereby leav-
ing behind a reminder of their fleeting act of civil
disobedience.

PROJECTS

101

Opposite. Ås the chalk columns crumbled, parUcipants wrote messages on the
nearby pavement (Courtesy Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla).

Clockwise from top left ; Protesters gather outside the Peruvian Mumcipal
Palace of Lima. Participants write messages in chalk in the Plaza de Armas
in Lima. Many of the messages criticized the Peruvian government, and were
later washed away by military officers. (Courtesy Jennifer Allora and Guillermo
Calzadilla)

102

LIVING AS FORM

LARA ALMARCEGUI AND
BEGONA MOVELLÅN

HOTEL FUENTES DE EBRO

1997

A national highway runs through Fuentes de
Ebro, yet the small, Spanish village rarely receives
visitors. In orderto draw attention to the area, Lara
Almarcegui and Begona Movellån converted the
local train station, which had been abandoned for
20 years, into a free hotel for one week. "The town
is not beautiful, and not the kind of village people
would likely visit," Almarcegui says. "So, I thought
it would be a kind of extreme gesture to propose
that people spend a week there."

She used $400 from a small grant to renovate
theconcrete, two-story building, which—with high

ceilings and tiled flooring—was an apt candidate
for use as a hotel. Almacegui and Movellån paint-
ed the interior walls, brought in furniture donated
by the town's residents, installed electricity and
plumbing, and advertised the repurposed station
in the neighboring city of Zaragoza. Though the
hotel was completely booked during the project's
run, the effort remained somewhat clandestine,
since Almarcegui originally received permission
from railway officials to use the station as an exhi-
bition venue, not a residential facility. "They never
would have let me create a free hotel, especially
since there was no museum" backing the project,
she says. "So the event was a secret among the
guests. I even asked them to hide their luggage—I
was so afraid." Fuentes de Ebro residents continue
to use the building as a meeting and event space.

Almarcegui lives in Rotterdam. In preparation
for Hotel Fuentes de Ebro, she spent one month in
Spain researching unused architectural spaces
that offer potential Solutions to housing and urban
dilemmas. Her work often explores different meth-
ods for forming relationships to communities,
usually through long-term research, interview-
ing residents, investigating new possibilities for
aging infrastructure.

Above; Guests enjoy drinks at the hotel (Courtesy Lara Almarcegui).

Opposite , top to bottom: Maids clean the hotel interior. Almarcegui and
Movellån converted the abandoned Fuentes de Ebro train station into a
temporary hotel (Courtesy Lara Almarcegui).

104

LIVING AS FORM

Above, top to bottom: TWelve Gulf Coast artists and Alternate ROOTS members
affected by Hurricane Katrina participate in The Katnna Project. The perfor¬
mance consisted of a variety of artistic forms, mcluding music, performance,
and dance. (Photographs by Carlton Ibrner)

ALTERNATE ROOTS

UPROOTED: THE
KATRINA PROJECT

PROJECTS

FRANCIS ALYS

WHEN FAITH
MOVES MOUNTAINS

105

2006-2008

In 2006, Atlanta, Georgia-based nonprofit
Alternate ROOTS presented Uprooted: The Katrina
Project, an experimental theater production, writ-
ten and performed by twelve artists from Gulf
Coast communities, that offered responses to the
damages they suffered and witnessed, inflicted
by the 2005 hurricane. Using different artistic
forms (including dance, hip-hop, and storytell-
ing), the piece reflected the experiences of differ¬
ent populations in the region, based on extensive
conversations the artists conducted with current
and former residents of New Orleans. The perfor¬
mance and its related community outreach con-
veyed a message about the way poverty and rac-
ism can render communities vulnerable to natural
disaster, the complicity of governments and citi-
zens in enabling such destruction, and the need
to reframe the tragedy as a social justice crisis.

Uprooted was produced in collaboration with
actor and activist John 0'Neal, an early member
of Alternate ROOTS along with the organiza-
tions founder, the late Jo Carsen. Both were art¬
ists coming out of the Civil Rights and anti-war
movements who wanted to affect social change in
their communities through the arts. Since then,
Alternate ROOTS has provided artists—particular-
ly those who work with underserved populations
in the South—with funding, support, and other
forms of assistance. The organization serves com¬
munities by bringing the arts to the region, as a
way to generate dialogue about the conditions
in the region. "A festival can actually begin and
create a conversation about the calamity that
has happened in a community," says executive
director Carlton Turner, "and begin the process
of emotional reparation and physical reclamation
of the space."

2002

Artist Francis Alys provided shovels to 500
volunteers standing at the base of a 1,600-foot
sand dune located near an impoverished shanty-
town outside of Lima. For the next several hours,
the volunteers, all dressed in white, climbed the
mound in a single, horizontal line, digging in uni¬
son until they reach the other side, and had dis¬
placed the sand by nearly four inches. Alys, who
lives and works in Mexico City, often makes work
based in single actions, such as pushing a block
of ice down a street, or walking home with a punc-
tured paint can, trailing splattered paint behind
him. For Barrenderos— another group action proj¬
ect—he followed twenty streets sweepers as they
pushed garbage through the streets of Mexico
City. The sweepers began in the gutters and side-
walks, collecting the debris into the center of
the road until the growing heap was too heavy to
move—a sculptural form that reflected the envi-
ronmental costs of urban life as well as the labor
of the workers. Alys often says that hes less inter-
ested in making objects than in making myths or
designing collective experiences.

To execute When Faith Moves Mountains,
Alys spent several days enlisting locals to shovel
sand under the hot April sun on a cloudless day.
"At first I thought it was just silly to move a rock,
a stone," one participant noted in Alys' video
documentation of the project. But interest in the
project spread vi rally, if for no other reason than
out of curiosity for how the event might constitute
art. Another participant explained that he "got
involved because it was about doing something
with other people." When Faith Moves Mountains
was created for the third Bienal Iberoamericana
de Lima.

106

LIVING AS FORM

Above, top to bottom: Alys' volunteers break ground at the foot of a massive
sand dune just outside of Lima, Peru. By the conclusion of the epic project,
participants had succeeded in moving the dune four inches from lts original
location. (Courtesy Francis Alys and David Zwirner, New York)

PROJECTS

107

Above, top to bottom: More than 500 volunteer workers lined the base of the
1,600-foot dune. Equipped with shovels, the local volunteers each were asked
to push a small quantity of sand (Courtesy Frands Alys and David Zwirner,
New York)

LIVING AS FORM

APPALSHOP

THOUSAND KITES

1998 -

When former DJ Nick Szuberla launched the
only hip-hop radio program in the Appalachian re¬
gion, inmates from the two neighboring SuperMax
prisons began writing him letters. Some were
very personal, recounting the racism and human
rights violations they suffered while incarcer-
ated. He responded by initiating an on-air chess
game with the prisoners, a simple gesture that ac-
knowledged, and provided brief respite from, their
hardships. Szuberla soon began broadcasting
the voices of prisoners themselves via a variety
of artistic projects, including poetry segments,
rap sessions, and collaborations between hip-hip
artists and local mountain musicians. In one epi¬
sode of the show, an imprisoned man expresses,
in verse, a long overdue phone call to his brother,
shortly after his mother's passing. In another, ti-
tled Calls from Home, a mother updates her incar-
cerated son on family events and describes daily
activities like her morning routine.

The radio show has since expanded into
Thousand Kites, a "national dialogue project"
and nonprofit organization based in Whitesburg,
Kentucky, that advocates nationally for prison re¬
form, primarily by creating transparency around
injustices that occur within the system. Szuberla
sits at the heim of the organization, whose name

is derived from the phrase "to shoot a kite," which
in prison slang means to send a message. At the
heart of the Thousand Kites project is a compre-
hensive website that features the stories of pris¬
oners, their families, activists, and artists in the
form of video and radio programs, blogs, and letter-
writing campaigns. The site also includes news
clips, press releases about legislative changes,
and accessible educational activities such as "We
Can't Pay the Bill," which outlines the rising costs
of maintaining prisons.

Thousand Kites operates under the 40-year-
old umbrella nonprofit Appalshop, which supports
regional arts in the Appalachian region, docu-
ments local traditions, and works to abolish ste-
reotypes of the areas residents.

JULIETA ARANDA AND
ANTON VIDOKLE

TIME/BANK

2010 -

Imagine that you could cook someone dinner
in exchange for getting your bike tire replaced,
or could teach someone Chinese to have your
website redesigned. Time/Bank is an alternative
economic model that allows a group of people to
exchange skills through the use of a time-based
currency. Time banking arose in utopian commu-
nities during the mid-19 th century and has been
adapted for contemporary use by projects like
Paul Glover s Ithaca Hours.

Started by artists Julieta Aranda and Anton
Vidokle in September 2010, Time/Bank is an in¬
ternational community of more than 1,500 artists,
curators, writers, and others in the field of art, who
are interested in developing a parallel economy
based on time and skills. Using a free website cre-
ated by the artists, participants request, offer, and

Above: Thousand Kites and the Community Restoration Hour trained over one
hundred activists to use flip video cameras (Courtesy Appalshop).

Opposite: The Portikus exhibition hall currently hosts the Frankfurt branch of
Time/Bank (Photograph by Helena Schlichtmg, Courtesy of Portikus).

Zurich/Basei <-> Frankfurt am Main P0STED 30 0CT 2010

Transportation
Zurich, 4h

Because I often make the trip on weekends, I am offering transport
between Zurich/Basei, Switzerland and Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Hand-wntmg

Communication
Brooklyn NY, 2h

—Regine Basha

If for whatever reason you need something t
(because we are all losing this skill) I can do a prel
Especially handwriting in small upper-case letters
more authoritative.

Regine

ive a
ice...

PROJECTS

111

pay for Services in "Hour Notes." Earned Hours
may be saved and used at a later date, given to
another individual, or pooled with other Hours for
larger group projects.

While much of the activity for Time/Bank hap-
pens online, the artists are consistently working to
develop an international network of local branch-
es. These branches can be temporary or long term,
and are arranged by the founders and members of
the bank. During Creative Times 2011 exhibition
Living as Form, Time/Bank opened Time/Food, a
commissioned project and temporary restaurant
located inside the by Abrons Art Center, which
offered daily lunch in exchange for time credits
and time currency that visitors earned by helping

others in the Time/Bank community. Each day,
the restaurant offered a different menu of meals
prepared with recipes provided by artists who like
to cook, including Martha Rosler, Liam Gillick,
Mariana Silva, Judi Werthein, Rirkrit Tiravanija,
K8 Hardy, Carlos Motta, and many others.

TumisWoi EnpltahtøSpwMi

**’’•*< <*>«iv» i.,.

Hm hniUvv!

Opposite: The Frankfurt Time/Bank houses a Time/Store, which offers a range
of commodities, groceries, and articles of daily use (Photograph by Helena
Schlichting, Courtesy ofPortikus).

Above: Aranda and Vidolke presented Time/Food, a temporary restaurant that
operated on the Time/Bank currency system, as part of Creative Time's Living
as Fbrm exhibition (Photograph by Sam Horine, Courtesy Creative Time).

112

CLAIRE BARCLAY

THE MILLENNIUM HUT

LIVING AS FORM

1999

Located in the Govanhill district of Glasgow,
Scotland, The Millennium Hut is a community
facility designed by artist Claire Barclay in col-
laboration with the firm Studio KAP Architects.
In 1999, five public areas of Glasgow, includ-
ing Govanhill, were picked for renewal by the
Millennium Space Project. With a footprint of just
two meters by two meters, the three-story wooden
structure enclosed a community garden store,
workshop, library, shelves for growing plants, and
a "viewing platform." The building was produced
from recycled materials and utilized solar panels,
reflecting an effort to harness natural resources,
and promote sustainable living practices.

Commissioned by the Govanhill Housing
Association, The Millenium Hut acted as an entry
point to the Govanhill neighborhood, and served
as a means of creating community in an ethnically
diverse district. The Millenium Space Project, part
of Glasgows Year of Architecture and Design, is a
year long program of exhibitions, events, and new
commissions to celebrate the citys designation
as the "UK City of Architecture 1999." Ultimately,
the program and projects like the Millennium
Hut generated an economic benefit of 34 million
pounds and served as a catalyst for further urban
regeneration.

Claire Barclay is a Glasgow-based artist
known for her large-scale sculptural installations
that combine formal elements with a scattered
aesthetic, using platforms, screens, and other

structures around which crafted objects lie in
carefully gathered constellations. She draws from
both craft and industrial processes, ranging from
ceramics to straw weaving, often combining metal
forms with intricately woven corn dollies or deli-
cately printed fabric. By mixing the familiar with
the strange, a sense of precariousness pervades
Barclay's architectural installations.

Above: Barclay's Millennium Hut was built to provide a much-needed commu¬
nity facility in the Govanhill district of Glasgow (Courtesy Claire Barclay
and Chris Platt).

PROJECTS

114

BAREFOOT ARTISTS

RWANDA HEALING
PROJECT

LIVING AS FORM

2004 -

In 1994, in one of the most brutal moments in
the history of genocide, two extremist Hutu militia
groups killed over one million people in Rwanda in
just 100 days. When Barefoot Artists founder Lily
Yeh visited the region of Gisenyi ten years later,
she found that mass gravesites were still com-
pletely dilapidated and survivors' camps lacked
the resources to help families grieve, cope, and
ultimately, recover from their losses. With the help
of the Red Cross, the Rwandan government, and
private foundations, Yeh launched the Rwanda
Healing Project, a multifaceted program of cultural
activities, as well as economic and environmental
development efforts, operated by and for village
residents.

Barefoot Artists establishes parks, murals,
sculptural installations, and other community-
based projects in underserved areas by involv-
ing residents in the entire process, from making
aesthetic decisions to navigating public policy.
The Philadelphia-based organizations first proj¬
ect in Rwanda was the realization of the Genocide
Memorial Park in Rugerero. As part of the con-
struction of the memorial, village residents worked
with a master mason to design and build the cen¬
tral monuments mosaic fapade. Since then, the
Rwanda Healing Project has come to include
Saturday morning storytelling sessions, English
classes, football games, and visual and perform-
ing art instruction. The Rugerero Survivors'
Village, where the Genocide Memorial is locat-
ed, also includes a rain harvest storage system,
a campaign to turn corncobs into cooking char-
coal, and a womens sewing cooperative, among
other initiatives.

More recently, Barefoot Artists has col-
laborated with residents in the area to build the
Pottery Arts Center—by first purchasing property.

then building the architecture. Finally, with the
help of faculty and students from the University
of Floridas Center for the Arts in Healthcare,
and volunteers from the U.S. Society for the Arts
in Healthcare, the community transformed the
structure into a public art project by installing mo¬
saic work and painting a mural of Twa dancers on
the fapade.

Above: The bone chamber, housed behind the green doors, is one element of
the memorial (Photograph by Chns Landy).

PROJECTS

115

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«i

1 rl

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7bp to bottom: Barefoot Artists erected the Genocide Memorial Park in
Rugerero, Rwanda, in 2007. Flowers lie at the memorial, which was designed
by Barefoot Artists founder Lily Yeh (Photographs by Lily Yeh).

tifelRi'

PROJECTS

117

BASURAMA

RESIDUOS URBANOS
SOLIDOS

(URBAN SOLID WASTE)

2008

Basurama is a Laboratory for considering
waste and its reuse launched in 2001 by a group
of students at the Madrid School of Architecture.
Since then, the group—who now work as profes-
sional architects, designers, and other urban
planners—has collaborated with communities to
explore what trash, and how we treat it, can re-
veal about the way we consider the world. The
groups work often exists in the form of workshops,

talks, and other discussion forums. But central to
Basurama's practice is the actual collection of de-
tritus, and rebuilding of public spaces, using the
leftover material. For example, in Lima, Basurama
rehabilitated an abandoned railway by inviting
local artists and other community members to cre-
ate an amusement park along the tracks. They also
enlisted school children in Miami to create musi-
cal instruments out of old car parts.

Such activities began in 2008, with the series
Residuos Urbanos Solidos (Urban Solid Waste),
projects Basurama has initiated in numerous cit-
ies globally. In the Suf refugee camp in Jerash,
Jordan, the group worked with Palestinian ref-
ugees to build a children's playground and a
shaded area for recreation. And in Buenos Aires,
discarded cardboard was used to fashion a make-
shift skate park. "We find gaps in these process-
es of production," Basurama says, "that not only
raise questions about the way we manage our re-
sources but also about the way we think, we work,
we perceive reality."

Opposite; Recycled car tires were used to construct a climbing wall along an
abandoned railway in Lima, Peru (Courtesy Basurama, RUS Lima, 2010).

Above: Community members enjoy the once-derelict public space around the
railway (Courtesy Basurama, RUS Lima, 2010),

118

LIVING AS FORM

7bp to bottom: Custom carts were built in Mexico City as a way of reciaiming
the streets for community and play (Courtesy Basurama, RUS México, 2008).
The Basurama crew work on a project in Cordoba, Argentina (Courtesy
Basurama, RUS Cordoba, 2009).

PROJECTS

119

BIJARI

TRANSVERSE REALITY
(CHICKEN PROJECTS 1,2)

2001,2003

Have you ever wondered what happens
when the chicken actually does cross the road?
According to the Brazilian collective BijaRi, peo-
ple react in vastly different ways depending on
their relative economic and cultural positions. In
2001, BijaRi let a chicken run loose in two Såo
Paulo shopping districts—first near the luxury
Iguatemi shopping mall and then in the adjacent
Largo da Batata, a bus stop and market generally
frequented by lower income residents—and filmed
the publics reaction. In the Iguatemi mall, secu-
rity guards immediately treated the chicken as a

criminal suspect (actually referring to it as a "sus-
picious entity"), carefully scrutinized its behavior,
and quickly removed the animal from the property.
Meanwhile, patrons of Largo da Batata, likewise
suspicious, reacted to the chicken in a much less
orderly fashion. They spoke to the chicken re-
proachfully as if it were a person, followed it en
masse, and ultimately allowed the bird to remain
on the premises. The project was presented in
the form of video documentation at the Havana
Biennial in 2003.

BijaRi, who work as architects, artists, and ac-
tivists, explore whether "so-called public spaces
are truly accessible to all," says member Mauricio
Brandåo. "We are interested in the way some of
these spaces become almost privatized due to
aesthetic, economic, social, and behavioral pat-
terns." They stage confrontational actions and
public performances that foster dissent, and pres¬
ent provocative images in urban spaces, including
street signs, poster campaigns, and large-scale
video projections. Projects such as Transverse
Reality aim to disturb the regular flow of life by
eliciting unexpected reactions from the public.

Above. A live chicken wanders around Largo da Batata, a bus stop and market
generally frequented by low-income Brazilians (Courtesy BijaRi).

120

LIVING AS FORM

BREAD AND
PUPPETTHEATER

THE INSURRECTION MASS
WITH FUNERAL MARCH
FOR A ROTTEN 1DEA

1962 -

"Art should be as basic to life as bread."
This is the motto of Bread and Puppet Theater, a
40-year-old nonprofit theater company with roots
in the 1960s anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights
movements. Started by German dancer and actor
Peter Schumann, Bread and Puppet performed in
the streets of Manhattans Lower East Side be-
fore relocating to a farm in Glover, Vermont. The

I self-financed group still uses its signature giant
cardboard and paper måché puppets—with heads
so large and exaggerated that they conjure refer-
ences to abstract sculpture—to take on a myriad
of contemporary issues, including extremist right-
wing politics and the Iraq wars. Performances
have often been staged outdoors, on grassy fields,
while costumed actors bring the gigantic puppets
to life by hoisting them into the air, in the fash¬
ion of a barn-raising. The puppets, along with
the myriad masks, paintings, and other props the
company has produced over the years are housed
in a one hundred-year-old barn that now serves a
museum for the organization.

The Insurrection Mass with Funeral March for
a Rotten Idea is a recurring show, part pageantry
and part faux-religious ritual, that exorcises "rot¬
ten ideas"—political and economic events, poli-
cies, and ideologies—after offering a playful cri-
tique of them. Modeled after a traditional Catholic
mass and historical witch hunts, the performanc¬
es end with readings, the playing of a fiddle, and
hymns; audience members are invited to partici-
pate. Bread, a symbol of compassionate, commu-
nal living, has been served at every performance
since 1962.

PROJECTS

121

M0V1M1ENT0 ■
INMIGRANTE 3

TANIA BRUGUERA

IMMIGRANT MOVEMENT
INTERNATIONAL
2011 -

Since April 2011, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera
has been operating a flexible community space,
housed in a storefront on Roosevelt Avenue
in Corona, Queens, which serves as the head- •
quarters for Immigrant Movement International.
Engaging both local and international commu-
nities, as well as social service organizations,
elected officials, and artists focused on immigra-
tion reform, Bruguera has been examining grow-
ing concerns about the political representation
and conditions facing immigrants. "As migration
becomes a more central element of contemporary
existence, the status and identity of those who
live outside their place of origin starts to become
defined not by sharing a common language, class,
culture, or race, but instead by their condition
as immigrants," Bruguera has said. "This proj-
ect seeks to embrace this common identity and
shared human experience to create new ways for
immigrants to achieve social recognition."

IM International, co-presented by Creative
Time and the Queens Museum of Art, launched
with a "Conversation on Usef ul Art," an event that
featured moderated conversations with artists,
representatives from local immigrant community
organizations, and local government officials.
Since then, IM International has opened its of-
fices for use by local community organizations
as an essential part of its mission. The Corona
Youth Music Project holds weekly lessons at IM
International, which provide young children with
the opportunity learn the basic social and motor
skills necessary for playing a stringed instrument.
IM International has atso teamed up with Centro
Communitario y Asesoria Legal to provide week¬
ly intakes and workshops on immigrant rights.
In addition to these regular events at the IM
International offices, IM International organizes

Clockwise from top loft: The office of Bruguera's Immigrant Movement Inter¬
national is located in the diverse neighborhood of Corona in Queens, New York.
Immigrant Movement International provides a space for outreach activities for
the local immigrant community. (Courtesy Thnia Bruguera and Creative Time)

122

LIVING AS FORM

group outings and programs, which aim to bring
to light the immigrant condition. Most recently,
as part of "Make a Movement Sundays," a group
participated in the visitor program at the Elizabeth
Detention Center in Elizabeth, NJ. Participants
met with immigrant detainees to learn about their
experiences in order to combat the increased
privatization of the detention center system since
September llth.

CAMP

PAD.MA

2008 -

In the age of YouTube, Online video archives
aren't a novel concept. But Pad.ma, short for
Public Access Digital Media Archive, offers cul-
turally and politically relevant footage that users
can edit, annotate, and distribute for free—trans-
forming notions of authorship, discourse, and
digital activism in the process. Co-initiated by the
Mumbai-based art space CAMP and other advo-
cacy groups who work in the disciplines of law,
information technology, and human rights, Pad.
ma contains several hundred hours of densely an-
notated, transcribed, and open-access material,
primarily culled from users in Bangalore, Mumbai,
and Berlin. Users can view the videos, which in-
clude interviews with artists, media criticism, and
global healthcare polemic, via an interface that
looks similar to video-editing software.

Since the 1990s, changes in video technol¬
ogy, and imaging practices in general, have actu-
ally served to limit public access to large archives,
particularly historically valuable images. Pad.ma
offers an experimental approach for creating and
sharing video, as well as knowledge, that moves
beyond the finite limitations of documentary films
and the ubiquitous online video clip.

CEMETI ART HOUSE

TRADITIONAL ART AND
CULTURE PRCX5RAM

2007-2008

Cemeti Art House is the oldest art space in
Yogyakarta, a city with no established infrastruc-
ture for the arts, but with an active, politicized
contemporary art scene. In 2007and 2008, Cemeti
partnered with ten Yogyakarta-based NGOs to
build a relief program for five villages in the after-
math of the massive earthquake that destroyed
regions in South Asia. Called the Traditional Art
and Cultural Program, this series of carnivals,
workshops, and performances mobilized area res-
idents to organize themselves in choreographed
parades and lavishly costumed dances in an ef-
fort to revitalize traumatized communities. The
program resulted in collaborations between local
contemporary and traditional artists.

Cemeti was founded in 1988 by artists Mella
Jaarsma and Ninditiyo Adipurnomo, who were
looking to fiLI the lack of viable venues for alter¬
native art practices. Since then, the organization
has hosted residencies that allow artists to pro-
mote their work nationally, and on the interna¬
tional art circuit. In 2010, Cemeti launched "Art
and Society," a series with focus on alternate,
process-oriented practice, rather than the pro-
duction of objects intended for gallery exhibition.
The organization has also privileged the voices
of artists in political discourse. "The days of a
common enemy have passed and commenting on
the social and political circumstances through
revolt or provocation is no longer the only way,"
says Jaarsma. "Recent art discourse shows us the
need to comment sensibly taking into account the
perspective of the global market and neo-liberal
developments. Artists are taking an active part
in the current changes. The motto is: 'lf you want
change, start with yourself; you can no longer
blame the government for everything.'"

Above: The post-earthquake revitalization program spanned nve vmages in me
Bantul area near Yogyakarta. The yearlong Traditional Art and Culture Prograrn
included workshops, carnivals, and performances. (Photographs by Dwi Oblo
Prasetyo, Courtesy Cemeti Art House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia)

PAUL CHAN

WAITING FOR GODOT
IN NEW ORLEANS

When artist Paul Chan visited New Orleans for
the first time in November 2006—a little more than
a year after Hurricane Katrina—he was struck by
the disquieting stillness: no construction crews
yelling over clanging driLis, no cranes visible on
the skyline, no birds singing in the distance. In
the ravaged, bleak landscape of the Lower Ninth
Ward, Chan recognized the solemn scenery of
Samuel Becketts iconic stage play Waitmg for
Godot. The artist perceived "a terrible symmetry
between the reality of New Orleans post-Katrina
and the essence of this play, which expresses in
stark eloquence the crueland funny things people
do while they wait for help, for food, for tomorrow.

Opposite: Artists from all over Indonesia took part in Traditional Art and
Culture. The progranTs aim was to revitalize performing and visual arts in the
traumatized areas. (Photographs by Dwi 'Oblo 1 Prasetyo, Courtesy Cemeti Art
House, Yogyakarta, Indonesia)

In the artisfs words, "seeing gave way to
scheming,” and Chan began to collect feedback
from New Orleanians on the idea of staging a free,
outdoor production of the play in the Lower Ninth
Ward. One piece of advice that had been given to
Chan came to define the artists approach to the
project: "If you want to do this, you gotta spend
the dime, and you gotta spend the time." Working
closely with director Christopher McElroen of the
Classical Theater of Harlem, a east that ineluded
Wendell Pierce and J. Kyle Manzay, and New York-
based public art presenter Creative Time, Chan
spent the nine months leading up to the produc¬
tion engaging New Orleans artists, activists, and

Åbove: J. Kyle Manzay (Estragon) and Wendell Pierce (Vladimir) perform Wait-
ing for Godot in New Orleans in 2007 (Photograph by Donn Young, Courtesy
Creative Time).

126

LIVING AS FORM

organizers to help shape the play and broaden the
social scope of the project.

The production was ultimately comprised of
four outdoor performances in two New Orleans
neighborhoods—one in the middle of an inter-
section in the Lower Ninth Ward and the other in
the front yard of an abandoned house in Gentilly.
However, with sustainability and accountability
in mind, the project evolved into a larger series of
events including free art seminars, educational

programs, theater workshops, and conversations
with the community. A "shadow" fund was set up
to match the production budget and was later
distributed to organizations located in the Lower
Ninth Ward and Gentilly.

Above: Mark McLaughlin (Lucky) and T. Ryder Smith (Pozzo) perform Waiting
for Godot in New Orleans, (Photograph by Paul Chan, Courtesy Creative
Time).

PROJECTS

127

MEL CHIN ET AL.

OPERATION PAYDIRT/
FUNDRED DOLLAR
BILL PROJECT
2006 -

When artist Mel Chin traveled to a post-Katrina
New Orleans in 2006, he learned that the citys
soil contained more than four times the amount of
lead deemed safe by the Environmental Protection
Agency—a condition that existed long before the
hurricane damaged the land. He also learned that
they city had no plans to repair it. Chin found that
treating lead-contaminated soil, a major contribu-
tor in a lead-poisoning epidemic that affected over
30 percent of New Orleans' inner city youth, could
cost $300 million. Operation Paydirt/Fundred
Dottar Bill Project was conceived in New Orleans
as a two-fold initiative: to find a solution to the
environmental threat through Operation Paydirt

and to create a national lead-awareness campaign
through the Fundred Dollar Bill Project.

The Project is a national campaign to raise
awareness and support by primarily recruiting
schoolchildren (though anyone interested in
participating is welcome) to draw "Fundred" dol¬
lar bilis, artistic interpretations of hundred dollar
bilis on a pre-designed template. The drawings
will be delivered, via an armored truck—which has
been retrofitted to run on waste vegetable oil—to
Congress to garner support of the proposed solu¬
tion. In 2010, Fundred's armored truck set out on
an 18,000-mile tour across the country, collecting
nearly 400,000 "Fundred" dollar bilis from thou-
sands of schools.

The solution has also gone national—
Operation Paydirt is now in collaboration with
the EPA in Oakland, California, on the first urban
implementation of Paydirfs protocol of lead neu-
tralization. Operation Paydirt continues HUD-
sponsored urban field trials in New Orleans. Chin
says, "Awareness is not enough. We are aware that
there is lead in the blood and brains of children
who can't learn and in the bones of young men in
prison. We must move into action with resolve to
deliver the voices of the people in opposition to
these realities, along with a solution to effectively
end this threat to children across America."

Above: The interior walls of the New Orleans Safehouse, which is pictured
above, are lined with thousands of hand-drawn Fundred Dollar Bills (Courtesy
Endotherm Labs).

Clockwise from top; University of Anzona students, faculty, and visitors hand
over bags full of Fundred Dollar Bills to the armored truck in Tfempe, AZ.
Schoolchildren from all over the country were asked to draw Fundred Dollar
Bills, artistic interpretations of hundred dollar bilis on a pre-designed template
(Courtesy Fundred Dollar Bill Project).

PROJECTS

129

CHTO DELAT?
(WHATISTOBE DONE?)

ANGRY SANDWICH
PEOPLE OR IN PRAISE
OF DIALECTICS
2006

On the hundredth anniversary of the first
Russian Revolution, collective Chto Delat? (What
is to Be Done?) organized activists in protest of
contemporary labor inequities on the square at
Narva Gate in St. Petersburg, the site of the origi¬
nal uprising in 1905. In this contemporary stag-
ing, Chto Deiat? invited low-income workers who
normally wear sandwich boards advertising local
businesses to participate by wearing new boards
bearing language from Bertolt Brechts poem, "In
Praise of Dialectics", as well as a series of ques-
tions: "Are you being exploited? Are you exploit-
ing somebody? Is exploitation inevitable?" The
first Russian Revolution was a violent and failed
attempt to dislodge government; Angry Sandwich
People aimed to reflect on the political implica-
tions of this failure.

Chto Delat?, which takes its name from
Vladimir Lenins historie political pamphlet, con-
sists of poets, artists, philosophers, singers, set
designers, critics, and writers who appropriate the
iconography and terminology of Communism in
their work. They work as "art soviets," inspired by
the councils formed in Russia at the beginning of
the 20 th century. Relying heavily on political and
artistic theory, Chto Delat? explores the idea of
"participatory demoeraey," and the history of the
word "solidarity," through exhibitions, artworks,
and projeets in public space.

HACMJlbE

B E LU[ AET

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4BflA

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Åbove, top to bottom: Low-income workers in St. Petersburg gather at the
Narva Gate to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the first Russian
Revolution. Workers carry sandwich boards bearing language from Bertolt
Brechfs "In Praise of Dialectics." (Courtesy Chto Delat?).

130

LIVING AS FORM

,_ xi _ j . _ ...i». _' affordable Solutions that empower individuals to

SANTIAGO Cl RUG EDA participate in the design of their cities, Cirugeda

CASA ROMPECABEZAS has often asked, "How can the Citizen play an im-

2002 2004 portant role in the development and construction

of the environment?" Puzzle House proposes one
possible answer by separating citizenship and
property rights, and dispersing urban planning
among those with the least access to the process.

Casa Rompecabezas, or Puzzle House, con-
sists of glass panes, metal beams, and unpainted
drywall—a plain, sturdy structure that conjures
both Modernist architecture as well as industrial
detritus. Designed by architect Santiago Cirugeda
to be constructed, deconstructed, and transport-
ed quickly, his adaptable building slipped on and
off of empty lots in Seville, Spain, for two years,
and provided shelter for a range of urban needs.
This included safe living space for the homeless
as well as for squatters; a performance and exhi-
bition venue for artists; and a multi-use meeting
area for community activists.

Since 1996, Cirugeda has developed Recetas
Urbanas, or "urban prescriptions," lika Puzzle
House, strategies that sidestep the citys restric-
tive planning and construction laws enabling
anyone to solve housing issues autonomously,
without the mediation of architectural specialists.
Because Seville, like most cities, requires govern-
ment-issued permits in order to build permanent
structures on public land, Puzzle House was de¬
signed as an impermanent structure—located on
privately-owned property with permission from
the owner. Each installation had a specific pur-
pose and a finite lifespan, at the end of which
the inhabitants would disassemble the house in
several hours and vacate the lot. The blueprint
was equally simple to follow, so new users could
replicate it once a new site was located and a new
purpose identified. The budget for Sevilles Puzzle
House included nothing beyond the cost of cheap,
readily available materials since there were no
permit or rental fees.

Cirugeda's projects promote communal land-
use over highly regulated and bureaucratized
public ownership.Through his practice of creating

CAMBALACHE COLECTIVO
(CAROLINA CAYCEDO,
ADRIANA GARCIA GALAN,
ALONSO GIL, AND
FEDERICO GUZMAN)
MUSEO DE LA CALLE

1999 -

El Museo de ta Calle, or "The Museum of the
Street," is a large wooden cart on wheels—a carro
esferado— where people can exchange or donate
used objects as part of an alternate economy that
values recycling and a do-it-yourself ethos above
profit. This mobile flea market, which originated
in Bogotå, Colombia (a city with no formal recy¬
cling program), travels to other locales in order to
expand its collection and increase the number of
global participants.

El Museo de la Calle was first conceived of by
Colectivo Combalache, or "Barter Collective," a
group of artists that worked in El Cartucho, a for-
merly depressed neighborhood of Bogotå located
only seven blocks away from the Presidential
Palace that was demolished in order to serve as

PTOJECTS

131

the site of The Third Millennium Park. After wit-
nessing the bartering practices of homeless peo-
ple and members of other disadvantaged groups
who lived in the area, the artists began swapping
goods—including clothing, books, and childrens
toys—as a way to participate in the community,
form relationships with the people they shared
the space with, and also to continue the,spirit of
El Cartucho as a site of local culture that no longer
exists. Despite its name, El Museo de lo Calle does
not operate in the manner of a traditional muse¬
um. Its contents aren't preserved on pedestals or
behind glass; instead, they function on the street
and in the home, enabling audience interaction.

Clockwise from top right: Two women barter their goods in Plaza Che at the
National University m Bogotå. Columbian schoolchildren stand next to El Veloz
("The Swift"), the large wooden cart on wheels containing objects for barter
Onlookers view a display of objects available to barter. (Courtesy Cambalache
Collective).

132

LIVING AS fORM

Inspired by Horace McCoys They Shoot
Horses, Don't They?, a novel about dance mara-
thons that emerged during the Great Depression,
Collins' displayed his horses in two channels on
opposing walls of darkened museum galleries,
first in Britain and then internationally. Both his
project and its namesake thrived by falsely glam-
orizing and deeply humanizing ordinary people
living amid conflict.

In September 2000, riots at the Al Aqsa
mosque in Jerusalem sparked adecadeof violence
in Palestine, resulting in a death toll of over 6,000.
Yet Collins' video, like many of his projects, avoids
overtly political messages or lurid accounts of life
in contested territories. Instead, he reveals per-
sonality and character that come through when
people are celebrated, and by turns exploited, in
front of a camera by performing uncontroversial
acts. He has invited Morrissey fans in Istanbul
to record Smiths covers; interviewed former talk
show participants who were victimized by un-
ethical production antics; and, on the cusp of the
Iraqi war, persuaded Bagdad residents to sit for
screen tests for a non-existent Hollywood movie.

PHIL COLLINS

THEY SHOOT HORSES

2004

In 2004, artist Phil Collins recruited teenag-
ers in Ramallah to dance to pop music against
a hot pink backdrop, without intermission for
an entire day, while he filmed them in a single
take. The resulting seven-hour video, they shoot
horses, captures their sincere, marathon perfor¬
mance, carried out despite power outages, calls to
prayer, and technical failures. In sweatbands and
jerseys, the teens spun on their backs to Olivia
Newton John, moved with slow, deliberate rhythm
to Madonna, and scissored their arms to OutKast
until finally sliding to the floor in exhaustion as
Irene Cara crooned "Fame"—a song about hope,
perseverance, and immortality.

Above and opposite: The teenagers danced uninterrupted for eight hours for
Collins’ video (Courtesy of Shady Lane Productions in Ramallah).

PROJECTS

133

134

LIVING AS FORM

CELINE CONDORELLI
AND GAVIN WADE

SUPPORT STRUCTURE

2003-2009

Support Structure was an architectural inter¬
face, created by architect Céline Condorelli and
artist-curator Gavin Wade, that could be continu-
aLly reinvented by its users for different purposes,
such as housing objects or facilitating working
environments. In each iteration of the project,
the infrastructure allowed the people within it to
consider the meaning of the space, as well as the
meaning of "support": "White the work of support-
ing might traditionally appear as subsequent, un-
essential, and lacking value in itself," Condorelli
writes about the project, "[it is also a] neglected,
yet crucial mode through which we apprehend

and shape the world." Support Structure delved
into a range of arenas, such as art, politics, urban
renewal, and education. Through each iteration,
Condorelli and Wade aimed to build a universally
adaptable structure that still privileged specific
needs over generic, monolithic ones.

Support Structure launched with the project
"I Am A Curator," at the Chisenhale Gallery in
London, which offered storage, archival, and or-
ganizational space for artwork, and provided an
interface between the public, the work, curators,
and gallery staff. "I Am A Curator" also allowed
Chisenhale Gallerys visitors to be a curator for
one day, using artworks housed in an architectural
environment constructed inside the gallery. Their
"music for shopping malls" employed existing
commercial icons of the mall— Muzak and shop¬
ping bags—to reflect on the components of the
space that make this environment tick. "What type
of cultural and experiential knowledge does a mall
produce?" they asked. "Music for shopping malls"
treats malls as both high and low culture, and as
choreographed spaces, designed and organized
as interior civilizations that are cut off from the
outside world, yet completely mired in the global
economy and its cultural infrastructure.

PROJECTS

135

Opposite: Phase 9 (Public) of Support Structure was the development of
Eastside Projects, a new artist-run space and public gallery in Birmingham
(Photograph by Stuart Whipps).

Above: Phase 1 (Art) of Support Structure took place as part of the exhibition "I
am a Curator" at London‘s Chisenhale Gallery (Photograph by Per Huttner),

PROJECTS

137

CORNERSTONE
THEATER COMPANY

LOS ILLEGALS AND TEATRO
JORNALEROS SIN FRONTERAS
(DAY LABORERS THEATER
WITHOUT BORDERS)

2007

For six months, playwright Michael John
Garcés spent his days in a Home Depot parking lot
in Hollywood and on a street corner in Redondo
Beach, two of the most prominent—and contro-
versial—day laborer job sites in Los Angeles. He
waited in line with undocumented workers seek-
ing jobs, listened to their stories, and formed
relationships with members of this historically
voiceless group. Then, as part of his residency
at LA's Cornerstone Theater, he wrote the play
Los lllegals, a fictional account of day laborers
caught in the criminal justice system. Since its
inception, Cornerstone has embedded profes-
sional playwrights and actors in a variety of com-

munities—from small towns to groups organized
around social justice issues, like reproductive
rights and environmental protection—to produce
theater that reflects local concerns, histories, and
efforts. Community members are then east in the
produetion.

Los lllegals, which premiered at Cornerstone
in 2007 and then traveled to other cities, evolved
into Teatro Jornaleros Sin Fronteras, a small tour-
ing produetion that enlists day laborers to engage
in dialogue both on and off the stage. Directed by
Juan José Magandi, a day laborer who first acted
in Los lllegals, the company produces two to three
plays a year at job sites for approximately 150
audience members. Full-time ensemble members
write the scripts, which often convey difficult or
painful subjeet matter in a raueous, rallying, co-
medic format. For example, on-the-job accidents
may be exaggerated for the sake of emphasizing
the harsh realities of working without healtheare
benefits. Despite the inherent dangers of visibil-
ity, few day laborers decline to participate when
offered the opportunity, says Garcés, who now
serves as Cornerstone's artistic director. "In the
social justice movement, it's hard to pin down
cause and effect. There's a big difference between
being represented in the media, and standing up
to represent yourself. To be able to change the
meta-narrative; that's empowering."

Opposite, top to bottom: Day laborers perform in Los lllegals, which premiered
at Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles in 2007 (Courtesy John Luker/Corner-
stone Theater Company). Day laborers perform in a produetion of Tbatro Jomale-
ros Sin Fronteras (Courtesy Sam Cohen/Cornerstone Theater Company).

Above: Los lllegals evolved into Tbatro Jornaleros Sin Fronteras, a small tour-
mg produetion that enlists day laborers to engage in dialogue both on and off
the stage (Courtesy Sam Cohen/Cornerstone Theater Company).

138

ALICE CREISCHER AND
ANDREAS SIEKMANN

EXARGENTINA

UVING AS FORM

2002-2005

When Berlin-based artists Andreas Siekmann
and Alice Creischer began investigating
Argentina's 2001 economic collapse and the en-
suing public uprisings, they wondered: Why is the
crisis always depicted in the media by burning
tires and street barricades, rather than corporate
buildings and shopping malls? In other words,
why were signs of the downfall highlighted in
lieu of its causes? And can the use of such stock,
iconic images be avoided? The artists moved to
Buenos Aires to search for answers. Within the
first few weeks of their stay, they joined citizens
in street battles, the occupation of factories,
and confrontations with police. Siekmann and
Creischer then sought ways to accurately depict
this political moment by collaborating with artists
to produce ExArgentina, three years of immersive
projects that included a conference in Berlin, an
exhibition in Cologne, the publication of a book,
and a second exhibition in Buenos Aires.

These events reflected various methods of
coping with economic hardship and enacting re-
sistance without relying on stereotypical or dis-
empowering images of struggle or discord. For
example, the screen-printed posters of artists/
activists used during demonstrations; suits from
a now-defunct clothing factory decorated with
descriptions of the G8 meetings and also current
working conditions in the country; and a vast map
of the Argentinian crisis as it related to the global
economy.

This page, right: These drawings accompanied the chapter openings of the
publication Creischer and Siekmann produced; from the top, the chapter titles
are Negation, Militant Investigations, Cartography, and Political Narration
(Courtesy Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann).

PROJECTS

139

Above, clockwjse from top left: Suits from the defunct Brukman textile factory m
Buenos Aires are adomed with ephemera depicting the economic hardship in the
country. A small ribbon on one of the suits descnbes the current workmg conditions
m Argentina. Ex-Argentina was exhibited at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 2004
and at the Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires in 2006. (Photographs by Sol Arrese)

140

LIVING AS FORM

MINERVA CUEVAS

THE MEJOR VIDA CORP
(BETTER LIFE CORP)

1998 -

Minerva Cuevas' protests against capital-
ism don't take the form of riots or picket lines. "In
Mexico, there are demonstrations every day, but I
don't think they work anymore," Cuevas has said.
"People are too used to them." Instead, the artist
uses her web-based nonprofit corporation, Mejor
Vida Corp. ("Better Life Corp.") to distribute prod-
ucts and Services—including basic needs such as
access to transportation and affordable food—for
free. Since 1998, she has offered pre-validated
subway tickets, pre-paid envelopes for domes-
tic and international mailing, student ID cards
that allow users to receive discounted rates, and
barcode stickers that reduce the price of food in
supermarkets. Less obviously functional items
include so-called "safety pi Lis" for late-night sub¬
way rides (so riders don't fall asleep). Participants
in the project can also contribute money—not to
Cuevas' project, but to others in need. Mejor Vida
Corp. redistributes the donated funds to panhan-
dlers and provides documentation of the donation
to the donor. Orders for barcodes, subway tickets,
and other products can be placed through Mejor
Vida Corp/s website, which is organized much like
a commercial business site, except that it adver-
tises institutional critique—"We wonder if in fact
the National Lottery helps to finance public as-
sistance...if so, where is it?"—instead of the con-
sumption of goods.

Cuevas' works tweak existing social and eco-
nomic systems to suggest possibilities for more
equitable conditions, often by offering alterna-
tives such as her MVC products, or "S.COOP,"
a new currency she introduced at Londons
Petticoat Lane Market. She uses a range of media

from photography and video to performance and
public intervention, based on detailed research, to
skewer corporations. For example, her Del Monte
campaign, critiqued the privatization of natu-
ral resources in South America, and more recent
work considers the environmental and historical
repercussions of the oil industry in Mexico.

DECOLONIZING
ARCHITECTURE
ART RESIDENCY

OUSH GRAB
(THE CROWS NEST)
2008

Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency
is a Palestinian art and architecture collective
and a residency program based in Beit Sahour,
Palestine. Organized by architects Sandi Hilal,
Alessandro Petti, and Eyal Weizman, DAAR exam-
ines the possible re-usage of existing architecture
in occupied territories—a process they refer to as
"Revolving Door Occupancy."

In 2006, the Israeli army evacuated Oush
Grab (literally translated as "The Crows Nest"),
a hilltop military site at the edge of Beit Sahour,
Bethlehem, from which colonial regimes had
governed Palestine for centuries. When Israeli
settlers took control of the abandoned build-
ing, Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency
(DAAR), along with other Palestinian and inter¬
national activists, reclaimed Oush Grab as public
space and initiated plans to convert it into a multi-
use park. To generate interest as well as support
for the plan, DAAR hosted bingo games, film

PROJECTS

141

screenings, prayer sessions, and tours of the Land
with the help of NGOs and the local municipality.
The Israeli settlers retaliated by marking the old
structure with graffiti, which DAAR responded to
by organizing community cleanup measures. In
addition, after discovering that same hilltop was
also a roosting ground for thousands of migrating
birds, DAAR punctured the structure with hoies in
order to transform it into both an observatory and
a nesting place.

Clockwise from top: The hilltop military site Oush Grab ("The Crow's Nest )
was evacuated in 2006 by the Israeli army. Decolonizing Architecture's render-
ing of the site illustrates plans for conversion into a multi-use park. (Courtesy
Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency).

142

LIVING AS FORM

JEREMY DELLER

BATTLE OF ORGREAVE

2001 -

The memory of labor cLashes in working-class
neighborhoods often Lives on in famiLy foLkLore
and community history. But the 1984 National
Union of Mineworkers' strike in South Yorkshires
Orgreave still felt palpable and present to resi-
dents of this small village seventeen years later
as they gathered for a re-enactment organized
by British artist Jeremy Deller. Commissioned by
the London-based arts organization Artangel and
public television broadcaster Channel 4, Deller
enlisted historical re-enactment expert Howard
Giles to orchestrate the filrned production. One
third of the more than 800 participants were for¬
mer miners and police officers, many of whom had
been involved in the original strike.

Once again, the miners gathered at the local
coking plant, then marched to a nearby field when
the police arrived. Deller and Giles took pains to
match the intensity of the '84 strike, which erupt-

ed into violence, particularly on the part of law
enforcement. In preparation for the re-enactment,
the artist spent months researching the strike—
pouring over court testimonies, oral accounts,
contemporary newspaper reports and film foot-
age—in order to reconstruct events as accurately
as possible.

London-based Deller acts as curator, pro¬
ducer, and director in his projects, which revolve
around his engagement with perceptions and
memories. In 2009, he organized It Is What It Is:
Conversations About Iraq, a collaborative com-
mission of Creative Time, the New Museum and
3M, that culminated in a cross-country road trip
and series of conversations about the Iraq War
at public sites. In tow was the ultimate conversa-
tion starter: a car destroyed in a bombing on Al-
Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad in March 2007.

Above: More than 800 people—many of them former miners and police—par-
ticipated in Deller's re-enactment of 1984's Battle of Orgreave (Photograph by
Martin Jenkinson, Courtesy Artangel).

fc. N»

PROJECTS

143

Åbove; Re-enactors play the role of strikers dodgmg an unprovoked charge
from the mounted police (Photograph by Martin Jenkinson, Courtesy Artangel).

144

LIVING AS FORM

Above; Strikers from the re-enactment sport yellow badges that identify them
as members of the National Union of Mineworkers. (Photograph by Martin
Jenkinson, Courtesy Artangel).

PROJECTS

145

146

LIVING AS FORM

MARK DION,

J. MORGAN PUETT,
AND COLLABORATORS

MILDREDA LANE

1998 -

In 1998, artists J. Morgan Puett and Mark
Dion transformed a 92-acre Pennsylvania farm,
built in the 1830s, into Mildreds Lane, a mecca for
experimental living and art production. The three-
building compound serves as a Creative retreat at
the end of a long dirt road, housing an apiary, tree

house, pavilion, and an elaborate, fruitful garden.
Puett and Dion invite visitors to inhabit the land
as if it were a studio, camp out, and embrace its
natural resources as media. Many come to col-
laborate on performances, films, books, and other
projects—particularly those that explore daily life
practices, such as eating, shopping, and sleeping.

Each summer, Puett and Dion host themed
sessions for three weeks; in 2010 the session
Town & Country explored the divisions between
urban and rural life through poetry readings,
and workshops based on Thoreaus Walden. This
past summer, a group of artists, engineers, and
environmentalists devised a "complete aquatic
environment for humans and non-humans" by
studying sustainable hydrology, the history of
aquariums, and architecture. The original farm-
house, now Mildreds Lane Historical Society and
Museum, houses an archive of past projects.

Above: Pablo Helguera and Academia de los Nocturnos presented work while
guest chefs b in June 201 l(Courtesy Mildred’s Lane).

PROJECTS

147

Tbp to bottom: Participants at Mildred's Lane enjoyed a Social Saturday dinner
with artist Fritz Haeg in 2010. For a Social Saturday Supper Club in 2011, a selec-
tion of readers, including Robert Fitterman of The Word Shop, read their work.
(Courtesy Mildred’s Lane),

148

LIVING AS FORM

MARILYN DOUALA-BELL
AND DIDIER SCHAUB

DOUALART

1991 -

Doualart is a nonprofit cultural organization
and research center founded in 1991 in Douala,
Cameroon, by husband and wife team Didier
Schaub and Marilyn Douala-Bell. Created to fos¬
ter new urban practices in African cities, douaiart
invites contemporary artists to engage with the
city of Douala in order to mold its identity and to
bridge the gap between the community and con¬
temporary art production. In particular, the orga¬
nization offers coaching and support to artists
whose research and work are centered on urban
issues.

The group uses art as an instigator of eco-
nomic and social change, especially as a means
of fighting poverty and indigence. By produc-
ing site-specific interventions and hosting ex-
hibitions, lectures, residencies, and workshops
douaiart works as an intermediary between social
and economic actors, local collectives, and the
general population. It fosters cultural and artistic
initiatives as a tool for bridging divides between
different urban populations, in turn promoting so¬
cial cohesion. douaiart implements a participato-
ry approach to cultural practice, negotiating with
local communities, NGOs and authorities their
specific needs and aspirations and involving art¬
ists as facilitators of the development processes.

In 2007, douaiart hosted the first Salon
Urbain de Douala (SUD 2007), a weeklong pub¬
lic art festival that gave artists free rein to explore
urban issues specific to Douala. Proposals ad-
dressed contemporary issues like urban mobil¬
ity, tradition vs. modemity, African continental
integration, and the art world and cultural policy,
and resulted in performances, temporary installa-
tions, happening, concerts and film screenings.
Three years in the making, SUD 2010, the second

iteration of the SUD festival, addressed the theme
"Water and the City." Host to thirty events includ-
ing public art installations and performances, the
festival also offered fourteen short-term (15 days
to one month) residencies that allowed guest art¬
ists from abroad to participate.

ELECTION NIGHT

HARLEM, NEW YORK

2008

On November 4, 2008, people across the
U.S. celebrated the election of Barack Obama—
on streets, at polis, and in bars. Yet, in the pre-
dominantly African-American neighborhood of
Harlem, New York, the mass, spontaneous erup-
tions of spirit seemed unified, at times even
choreographed, as if residents had been waiting
backstage, maybe not for the curtain to lift, but for
the glass ceiling to finally shatter. Minutes after
Republican nominee John McCain conceded the
race to Obama, thousands of people poured out
of their hornes and businesses onto the intersec-
tion of 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell,
Jr., Boulevard waving banners, line dancing, and
breaking out in song as they paraded through the
neighborhood. Police officers charged with pa-
trolling the scene clasped Obama T-shirts, while
people climbed atop cars to record the festivities
with their cell phones. With the camera crews'
bright lights beaming on them, revelers built ice
sculptures, beat drums, painted their faces, and
blared music from speakers, which were eventu-
ally quieted before the broadcast of the president-

PROJECTS

149

Åbove. On Nov. 4th, 2008, a massive celebration broke out in Harlem, New York,
after the announcement that Barack Obama had won the presidential election
(Photograph by Spencer Platt, Courtesy Getty Images).

150

LIVING AS FORM

elects speech—an event that, for many, signified a
power shift beyond the usual torch-passing from
one political party to the next.

In the 1920s, Harlem incubated a flood of ar-
tistic production, the formation of black cultural
and political organizations, and an overall col-
lective expression within the community. The
post-election demonstrations commemorated the
history of the Harlem Renaissance, as well as the
energy of grassroots activism that the Democratic
campaign had embodied in its last few months.
The night also conjured a more typical American
phenomenon: the endorphin-induced euphoria of
sports fans after a winning game. As one blogger
wrote the day after, "Not since the Giants won the
Super Bowl has New York come together like this."

FALLEN FRUIT

PUBLIC FRUIT JAM

2006 -

In 2004, Fallen Fruit—the artists David Burns,
Matias Viegener, and Austin Young—created
maps of fruit trees growing on or over properties
in Los Angeles within a five-block radius of their
hornes, and then distributed the maps to the pub¬
lic for free. Property laws regarding the ownership
of trees, even those on private land, are ambigu-
ous in Los Angeles: When branches and foliage
extend beyond one neighbors yard to another,
maintenance rights extend as well. And when fruit
hangs over fences and sidewalks in the urban en¬
vironment, passersby arguably have the right to
pluck it. By making these potentially contested
areas in Los Angeles visible, Fallen Fruit encour-
aged the city's residents to consider their implica-
tions and also to explore this car-centric region on
foot, thereby socializing with new people under
new conditions.

The groups Public Fruit Jam project takes this
outreach effort one step further: Since 2006, they
have invited the public to bring their own home-
grown or street-picked fruit to events at museums
or galleries in order to make jsrm. Without working
from recipes, they ask people to sit at tables with
strangers, negotiate ingredients, and engage in
discussion. For example, "If I have lemons and you
have figs, we'd make a lemon jam (with lavender),"
the artists explain on their website. These "jam
sessions" stem from the seeds of Fallen Fruits
practice—a reconsideration of public and private
land use, as well as relations between those who
have resources and those who don't. "Using fruit
as our lens, [we] investigate urban space, ideas of
neighborhood and new forms of located citizen-
ship and community," says Burns.

Opposite, clockwise from top loft: Fallen Fruit post jam-making instructions for
the event attendees to follow. The public brings different kinds of fruit and works
without recipes, which results in unique jam flavors, Attendees participate in a
Public Fruit Jam at Machine Project, Los Angeles (Courtesy Fallen Fruit).

Above: Children carry signs of support for Barack Obama in Harlem on election
night, 2008 (Photograph by Spencer Platt, Courtesy Getty Images).

'5 c-up 5 Pui i
f ' 'ji_ lUP fccfin

■> ApD ••

O c u|/S 5 J -. t A ^

fjgPJNC* Té A e'Oi L

°% store this jam in a
re frigerator. ’ Or fi' eeze 1

152

LIVING AS FORM

BITA FAYYAZI,

ATA HASHEMINEJAD,
KHOSROW HASSANZADEH,
FARID J AH ANGIR AND
SASSAN NASSIRI
STUDIO

1991

In 1991, five Iranian artists, Farid Jahangirand
Sassan Nassiri, Bita Fayyazi, Ata Flasheminejad,
and Khosrow Hassanzedeh, took over an aban-
doned house in Tehran, Iran, and used it as both
studio space and found object—a place to col-
laborate, and also explore the physical and politi-
cal meaning of urban architectural detritus. They
spent two months creating various projects in
the house, including paintings, installations, and
sculptures. An installation of wallpaper peeled
away from the walls in long strips, broken vases
spilled over countertops and out of cabinets, and
atmospheric projections of images like El Grecos
Burial of Count Orgaz filled the relatively spare
rooms of the house.

At the end of the two-month period, they
opened the project to the public, as well as other

Above: In 1991, five Iranian artists took over an abandoned house in Tfehran and
treated it as an art piece (Photograph by Behnam Monadizadeh),

PROJECTS

153

artist collaborators. During the artists stay, the
house maintained its status as abandoned prop-
erty—no effort to renovate it occurred—while it
aLso evolved into an active, Lived space. After the j
run of the show, the artists demolished the house,
carrying out its original, intended fate.

Above and right: Over the course of two months, the artists created instal-
lations using various materials in the house (Photograph by Farid Jahangir),
After that time, they opened the house up to the public (Photograph by Afshin
Najafzadeh). At the end of the exhibition, the house was destroyed (Photograph
by Afshin Najafzadeh),

154

LiVING AS FORM

FINISHING SCHOOL

THE PATRIOT LIBRARY

2001 -

The Patriot Library is a nomadic collection
of books, periodicals, and other media deemed
potentially dangerous by the Federal govern¬
ment once The Patriot Act took effect after the
acts of terrorism on September 11, 2001. These
documents cover aviation training, chemistry,
propaganda, tactical manuals, tourist informa¬
tion, and weaponry—general topics that were
like ly researched by the World Trade Center at-
tackers. "However, we don't believe the pursuit of
knowledge is in itself dangerous," says Finishing
School's Ed Giardina. "Individuals should be al-
lowed access to all media free of governmental
oversight and intimidation." Finishing School
conceived of the project after many conversations
with librarian Christy Thomas, who witnessed the
governments violation of library patrons' right to
privacy without judicial oversight. Understanding
the American Library Associations privacy stan¬
dards, The Patriot Library doesn't keep records
of visitors personal information or use of mate¬
rials. The project, co-organized by Thomas and
Finishing School, was first installed in Oaklands
Lucky Tackle gallery in 2003.

Los Angeles-based Finishing School works
with experts from other fields to investigate and
take on alternative approaches to activism, partic-
ularly environmental, social, and political issues.
In 2008, the collective launched Little Pharma,
which examines alternative medicines and life-
styles as a viable antidote to some of the drug
industry's pathologies. Little Pharma consists of
a series of workshops, roundtable meetings, lec-
tures, weblog, community medicinal garden, and
a drug-themed bike ride.

Get caught
reading!

Tbp: At Oakland’s Lucky Tackle gallery, The Patriot Library's reference website
could be used to browse the book collection. Åbove and opposite: Posters
advertising The Patriot Library. (Courtesy Finishing School and Adam Rompell/
Lucky Tfeckle)

PROJECTS

155

Learn to read the rainbow

156

LIVING AS FORM

FREE CLASS FRANKFURT/M

ARTWORKERS COUNCIL

Books

The Art Workers Council is a forum initiated
by Free Clåss Frankfurt, a group that began as a
reading club at the art school Staedelschule, and
expanded to include members from outside the
student body. This self-organized artists' associa¬
tion addresses art and politics via reading groups,
seminars, collaborative exhibitions, parties, and
public events—all non-academic frameworks that
counter economic disparities that result in lim¬
ited access to the arts and arts education. In April
2010, Art Workers Council staged a demonstra-
tion against wage labor to promote "a social revo-
lution that won't be satisfied with formal promises
of freedom, but sees communism of the 21 st cen-
tury as the solid self-determination of everybody,"
according to their manifesto:

"Art is no wage labor. Artistic freedom prom¬
ises its producers to themselves decide about
the means, ways, and content of production. This
formal independence from the standards of sur-
plus value production still feeds the contradicting
promise of art to allow self-determined produc¬
tion, despite capitalism. This assumed salvation
of artistic refusal of wage labor is the humiliating
competition for a place among those 5 percent,
who at least temporarily can survive from their in-
come as artists. One who is not yet part of those
chosen few, is allowed to hope for the slightly bet-
ter chance of getting a place in the state-funded
residency carousel, traveling from one gentrifica-
tion project to another. This includes free studio-
usage and pocket money, but continuities of polit-
ical commitment and solidarity organization can
barely take place in this context."

2007 -

Above; Posters advertising The Patnot Library (Courtesy Finishing School and
Adam Rompell / Lucky Thckle),

PROJECTS

157

nmer in einem Arbeiterklub.

Tklub", Auffiihrung eines Stiickes von Meyerhold . 1

On February 3 rd , 2004, Brazilian dentist Flåvio
Sant'Ana was in the wrong place at the wrong
time—or, so the story goes. As he made is way
down a street in sprawling Såo Paulo, SantAna—a
young black man—was shot in the head and killed
by the citys military police. In the aftermath of the
tragedy, the police claimed that they had mistaken
SantAna for the perpetrator in a robbery and that
his death was nothing more than an unfortunate
accident. The mainstream media quickly perpetu-
ated this narrative. However, a counter-narrative
soon emerged and SantAnas death became a
touchstone for racial injustice in Brazil.

For one group, made up of artists and academ-
ics, the event revealed "racial democracy as a de-
liberate attempt to deny perverse social practices
punctuated by the legacy of slavery." Adopting
the name Frente 3 de Fevereiro the self-described
"research and intervention group" began creating
overtly political projects to challenge the main¬
stream narrative and bring public awareness to
the killing. First, the group fabricated a plaque
that was placed at the exact spot where SantAna
was murdered. The text on the plaque served as
a memorial for SantAna but also made a clear
case for what had actually transpired. Later, Frente
pasted posters throughout the city asking the
provocative question, "Who polices the police?
Police racism."

Frente 3 de Fevereiros outreach culminat-
ed in the fifty-minute video Zumbi Somos Nås:
Cartografia do Racismo para o Jovem Urbano (l/l/e
are Zumbi: A Cartography of Racism for Urban
Youth ), a poetic manifesto on racism that has
been screened internationally. The group contin-

7bp to bottom: Members use a reading room in a workers 1 club in Germany.
Free Class Frankfurt layers a contemporary image with a vintage photograph
of a performance in a typical German worker's club. (Courtesy Free Class
Frankfurt)

158

LIVING A5 FORM

Above: Frente 3 do Fevereiro created a horizontal monument to commemorate
the death of Flavio SanfAna, a young black dentist wrongfully murdered by Såo
Paulo military police in 2004 (Courtesy of Frente 3 de Fevereiro),

PROJECTS

159

ues to advocate for racial justice by contextualiz-
ing information the public receives through mass
media and creating new forms of protest pertain-
ing to racial issues.

Tbp to bottom: Dunng Rio de Janeiro's Carnival in 2010, FYente 3 de Fevereiro's interven- Åbove: The N We Are Zumbi” flag hangs outside a Homeless Movement occupation

hon Haiti Aqui (Haid Here), a 3-foot inflatable ball, connected the past and present condi- in downtown Såo Paulo as part of the resistance to keep the building (Photograph

tions in Haiti with the conditions m the slums of Rio de Janeiro (Photograph by Cris Ribas). by Julia Valiengo).

Signs created by FYente 3 de Fevereiro reading, "Save Black Brazil" and "Where are the
blacks?’ 1 (Courtesy Frente 3 de Fevereiro); "We are zombies" (Photograph by Peetssa).

160

THEASTER GATES

THE DORCHESTER PROJECT

LIVING AS fORM

2009 -

Since 2009, artist and urban plannerTheaster
Gates has purchased three abandoned buildings
on Chicago's South Side and refitted them with
remnants of the city's urban landscape, includ-
ing wooden floors that once lined an old bowling
alley, and windows that served as doors in a mu¬
seum. The renovated structures—a former candy
store, a single-family home, and a duplex—also
house pieces of Chicagos cultural history: In an
effort to preserve the collections, Gates acquired
14,000 books from a now-defunct bookstore and
60,000 antique lanternslides from the University
of Chicagos archive. Last year, he purchased
8,000 vinyl records when a Hyde Park record shop
closed. The Dorchester Project, named after the
street his buildings occupy, has become an ex-
pansive redevelopment effort, with the help of ar-
chitects, students, and city officials.

What began as a mission to rescue architec-
ture and objects has evolved into a larger mission
to bring artistic and social change to the South
Side, a historically underserved neighborhood.
The Dorchester Project serves as an incubator for
community artists and as an informal gathering
space where the public can meet for dinner, attend
performances, and engage in discussions about
art, urban blight, and possibilities for renewal.
While Gates' project has been largely touted as a
positive development, it has also generated criti-
cism—in the form of hate letters.

Above: Remnants from Chicago landmarks were repurposed to create the
fagade and decorate the intenor of the Dorchester Project building (Courtesy
of the artist and Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin).

PROJECTS

161

Above: The building houses a collection of 60,000 antique lanternslides from
the University of Chicago (top), 14,000 books Gates acquired from a now-
defunct bookstore (middle), and 8,000 vinyl records from a closed Hyde Park
record shop (bottom). (Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin)

162

LIVING AS FORM

ALONSO GIL AND
FREDERICO GUZMAN

ARTIFARITI

2007 -

For years, the Moroccan government and a
local Sahrawi dissident group have been at an
impasse over ownership of occupied land in the
disputed territory of Western Sahara in North
Africa. The conflict has resulted in a myriad of
human rights violations in Sahrawi refugee camps
along a 2,700-kilometer sand wall, studded with

landmines, that divides the Western Sahara terri¬
tory from Morocco. ARTifariti is an international
art festival that was launched in 2007 in response
to the violence and repressive conditions that the
militarized "Wall of Shame" engenders. This an-
nual event, comprised of exhibitions, workshops,
and symposia, takes place in the refugee camps
and in the oasis town of Tifariti, part of the so-
called "Liberated Territories" or "Buffer Zone" of
Western Sahara.

Initiated by artists Federico Guzmån and
Alonso Gil, ARTifariti accepts proposals from art¬
ists across the globe. A team of curators chooses
six projects that generally involve local materials
and resources and prompt permanent, structural
change in Sahrawi. For example, in 2010, the fes¬
tival supported a series of childrens workshops in
a neighboring town. The school-aged participants
painted a mural of Western Sahara that was used
as a backdrop while they re-enacted bombings,
bank robberies, and other events that mark the
lives of their Sahrawi peers.

PROJECTS

163

Opposite. Kneita Boudda pnnts T-shirts at Sahara Libre Wear workshop, a fash¬
ion label created by Alonso Gil in collaboration with the Sahrawi community
(Photograph by Paula Ålvarez, Courtesy ARTifariti)

Above: Artist Robin Kahn bakes a loaf of bread in the desert outside of Tifariti,
Western Sahara, as part oiDining in Refugee Camps; The Art of Sahrawi Cook-
ing (Courtesy ARTifariti).

164

LIVING AS FORM

PAUL GLOVER

1THACA HOURS

1991 -

In Ithaca, New York, you can mow a lawn to pay
for a movie ticket, or change a light bulb for a cup
of coffee—not through direct barter, but by using
a local alternative currency called Ithaca HOURS.
Nearly 500 businesses, including banks, contrac¬
tors, restaurants, hospitals, landlords, farmers
markets, and the local Chamber of Commerce,
accept HOURS, which are worth 10 dollars, or
roughly the average pay in Ithaca. Since its in-
ception, over 110,000 HOURS have been issued,
and millions of dollars in value have been traded
through the system, which is locally referred to as
the "Grassroots National Product." The bilis are
counterfeit-proof, serialized notes, produced in
denominations of 2 HRS, 1 HR, 1/2 HR, 1/4 HR,
1/8 HR, and 1/10 HR.

Author and activist Paul Glover created
the Ithaca HOURS system in 1991 as a way to
strengthen the local economy by backing it with
community labor, rather than national debt. Since
the tender is only valid within a 20-mile radius,
trade is limited to residents and businesses with¬
in the region; to that end, the currency promotes
local shopping and reduces dependence on trans¬
port fuels ."HOURS reminds us that wealth comes
from labor, and everyone deserves fair pay," Glover
writes on his website. "We printed our own money
because we watched Federal dollars come to town,
shake a few hands, then leave to buy rainforest
lumber and fight wars. Ithaca s HOURS, by con-
trast, stay in our region to help us hire each other.
While dollars make us increasingly dependent on
transnational corporations and bankers, HOURS
reinforce community trading and expand com¬
merce which is more accountable to our concerns
for ecology and social justice." Ithaca HOURS is
one of the largest, and oldest, alternative curren-
cies in the United States.

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7bp to bottom: Ithaca HOURS are printed in five denominations (Courtesy
Paul Glover). Glover, along with artist Jim Houghton, created a cartoon that
explains the purpose and use of HOURS (Designed by Paul Glover, Art by
Jim Houghton).

PROJECTS

165

JOSH GREENE

SERVICE-WORKS

2006 -

For the past ten years, Josh Greene has
been working both as an artist and a waiter in a
high-end San Francisco restaurant. One night a
month, Greene donates his tips—between $200
and $300—to another artist through his micro-
granting project Service-Works. Approximately
twenty-five applicants a month submit pitches to
the program through Greene's website. He under-
writes one proposal per round and displays the
idea online. Greene is the sole juror, and the ap¬
plication process for Service-Works, unlike those

of most foundations or government funding agen-
cies, requires only a simple project description
sent in the body of an email message, and an item-
ized budget. While anyone is eligible for a stipend,
those awarded grants are typically projects that
can be realized with roughly $300, within three
weeks, and are in tandem with Greene's personal
interests in "exchange, interaction, storytelling,
and problem solving."

"I have a particular fondness for projects
that grow out of and deal with real-life situations,
be they political, personal, or environmental,"
Greene says. "I also enjoy work that incorporates
risk, humor, pathos, and absurdity."

Some of the projects Greene has funded in-
clude a mobile replicaof a front stoop that fostered
impromptu conversations in Nashville,Tennessee;
a call for writers requesting impersonations of
George W. Bush lamenting his presidencys fail-
ures; and a cake party for first graders. Each entry
on the Service-Works website includes a brief
narrative about how Greene earned the money
that went toward the project. While the projects
he funds are disparate in content and form, each
reflects his interest in connecting his labor to an
artisfs work.

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iht Fiif OiRa jfc» fot tbe t.lrxl Ufothcfi
Mottuaiy m cicltanfpr fot the «cnoatioti <>(
het father.

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•//ar

1 am fairly ccrtain that this new job is not for mc. After my first night
of training I found mvsclf longing for my old job. I went as far as
contacting my former manager and sccing if I could have my old job
back. Hc said he filled my spot.

A fcw weeks have gonc by since that first night of training and therc
have been moments in which I have felt that everything would be ok.

I rcason with myself that my discontcnt has to do with it being a new
situation. But in a way, this is the opposite of rcason. I have been the
new gny a couplc of handfuls of times in my scrvicc-industry carccr and
usually the beginning stages of jobs are charactcrizcd by excitement
as opposed to dislikc.

This night did not stand out in any particular way except at the end of
the shift I told myself that after tomorrow night s shift - my last one
before a two-week vaeation- I will tell them that it is not working out
for me and give my notice.

Above: With Greene‘s $273 grant, Tina Heringer made paintings to barter with
a mortuary m exchange for the cremation of her father (Courtesy Josh Greene).

166

LIVING AS FORM

FRITZ HAEG

SUNDOWN SALON

2001-2006

Los Angeles-based artist and architect Fritz
Haeg bridges public and private spheres in his
inclusive, community-oriented actions. For his
Edible Estates project in 2005, he replaced sub-
urban lawns—the ultimate modernist moat—with
gardens full of native plants that encouraged
neighbors to talk to each other, use their prop-
erties communally, and grow the land into an
environmentally productive space. Likewise, his
Animal Estates (2008) were hornes for animals
that had been displaced by humans, usually situ-
ated on the premises of commissioning museums.
These makeshift sanctuaries included a beaver
pond located in a courtyard and an eagles' nest
placed in an outdoor foyer.

From 2001 to 2006, Haeg used his own estate,
a geodesic dome on Los Angeles' Sundown Drive,
to host semi-public gatherings of artists, neigh¬
bors, and other collaborators in which participants
gardened, knitted, read poems, played music, or-
ganized pageants, performed yoga, showed visual
art work, screened films, and simply exchanged
ideas. These so-called Sundown Salons, which
began as a small group of friends, expanded to
include a wide range of artists including My
Barbarian, Pipilotti Rist, Eve Fowler, Chris Abani,
and Assume Vivid Astro Focus, among others.
"The salons provided an alternative to the isolated
solitary creator in the studio. Instead, the salon
celebrated the truly engaged human, responding
to their time, environment, community, friends,
neighbors, weather, history, place," Haeg writes.

Haeg, via Sundown Salon, also staged
similar events at the Schindler House in West
Hollywood in collaboration with the MAK Center.
In September 2006, after thirty events, Sundown
Salon was converted into Sundown Schoolhouse,
an alternative art school where "public interac-
tion, physical connectedness, and responsive-
ness to place are valued above all else."

Above: Sundown Salon #29 (Dancing Convention, July 9, 2006) was a dance
workshop that took place in a geodesic dome (Photograph by Fritz Haeg).

PROJECTS

167

Top row: Sundown Salon # 11 (February 22, 2004, organized with Sabrina
Gschwandtner & Sara Grady) was a celebration of extreme knitting, art, craft,
and the handmade, where guests were invited to wear things they made and
bring projects to work on (Photograph by Jeaneann Lund).

Bottom: Sundown Salon #28 (Young Ones , June 18, 2006) was organized with
Joyce Campbell and Iris Regn as an opportunity for local children to participate
in salon events and projects, and for parents and children to establish a like*
minded local network (Photograph by Fritz Haeg).

168

UVING AS FORM

HAHA

FLQQD

1992-1995

In 1992, the collective Haha planted a hy-
droponic garden that grew therapeutic herbs
and leafy, green vegetabLes in an empty Chicago
storefront, and distributed the produce on a week-
ly basis to local AIDS and HIV patients. From the
sidewalk, the long rows of small plants, boxed
in perforated containers under artificial Lights,
looked more like a scientific laboratory than a
functioning garden. Yet for Laurie Palmer, a found-
ing member of Haha, the interconnected plastic
tubes captured the spirit of community, and that
of the human body itself—"Complex, intricate
networks," she says, "which were at the basis of
all of our interventions." Unlike outdoor gardens,
hydroponic gardens transport nutrients and min-

erals through water, not soil. The resulting asep-
tic conditions have proven to be safer for those
with immunodeficiency disorders. The vegetables
that Haha grew—including spinach, kaie, arugula,
] and collard greens—also contained anti-oxidants
| that could possibly enhance the effectiveness of
treatments.

With the help of a network of thirty neighbor-
hood volunteers, Haha transformed the garden
into a vast resource hub for the AIDS/HIV com¬
munity, which they intended to hand off toasocial
service organization at the end of their temporary
project, Flood. The group held lectures and work-
shops, provided informational materials, and of-
fered the storefront as a meeting space and public
forum for discussion about sex education, con-
traceptives, nutrition, treatment, healthcare, and
questions of personal and collective identity.

Flood was commissioned by Sculpture
Chicagos seminal exhibition, Culture in Action,
a two-year project that helped transform the role
of audience in public art from spectator to par-
ticipant. "We were already interested in creating
change through our work as artists," Palmer says.
"And believed that incremental change was the
fine-grained substratethat would make it happen."

PROJECTS

169

Opposite. Haha took over a vacated storefront on Greenleaf Street, where
they planted a hydroponic garden to provide produce for local AIDS and HIV
patients (Photograph by Haha, Courtesy Sculpture Chicago).

Above: A school group helps with the storefront community hydroponic garden
on Greenleaf Street in Chicago's North Side (Photograph by Haha, Courtesy
Sculpture Chicago),

170

LIVING AS fORM

tural centers throughout the city—from public pla-
zas to modest artist-run spaces. Examples of past
performances include Spanish artist Santiago
Sierra's installation of an enormous American flag
on the wall of the Tertulia Museum; French artist
Pierre Pinoncelli's amputation of his pinkie finger
in protest of the kidnapping of 2002 presiden-
tial candidate Ingrid Betancourt; and a concert
by Las Malas Amistades, a Casiotone art school
band whose independently produced CDs have
attained cult status among college students.

Helena Producciones is a nonprofit, multi-
disciplinary collective that expands definitions
of visual art by organizing events that promote
local culture and community-initiated activism.
The collective, which includes artists Wilson
Diaz, Ana Maria Millån, Andrés Sandoval, Claudia
Patricia Sarria, and Juan David Medina, often of-
fers institutional critique through its work, as well
as perspectives on local conditions, alternative to
the routine social and economic conflict endemic
in Colombia. The collective was also responsible
for Loop, a semi-weekly television program that

and through an open call for submissions. The aired in Cali from 2000-2001 and mimicked the
five-day festival would also include workshops, variety show format in order to report on the ac-
street interventions, and talks held in various cul- tivities of local artists and punk bands.

Above: Members of the Puerto Tejada school of fencing compete in a match
using machetes (Courtesy Helena Producciones).

HELENA PRODUCCIONES

FESTIVAL DE
PERFORMANCE DE CALI

1997-2008

For eleven years, Helena Producciones'
Festival de Performance de Cali played a key role
in the cultural life of Cali, Colombia, a city with
a notable shortage of resources and support net-
works for the arts. The festival provided a forum
for both emerging and established international
artists to create performances that were interac-
tive and politically motivated, and defied t rad i -
tional boundaries between artist and audience.
Artists were invited to participate by invitation

PROJECTS

171

STEPHEN HOB6S AND
MARCUS NEUSTETTER

URBANET-HILLBROW/
DAKAR/HILLBROW
2006

While conducting site research for an urban
redevelopment project in Johannesburg, South
Africa, Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter
were stopped at the Hillbrow border by two franco-
phone immigrants, who warned the artists against
entering the inner-city neighborhood with a cam-
era—suggesting that it might be stolen. Inspired
by the exchange, Hobbs and Neustetter asked a
group of Senegalese immigrants to draw maps
of Dakar, which the artists then used to navigate
the city during their two-week residency in May
2006. The project, titled UrbaNET - Hillbrow/
Da kar/Hillbrow, became their collective contri-
bution to the Dak'Art Biennale fringe program
"Dak'Art OFF." The resulting exhibition, held at
the Ker Thiossane residency space, was com-
prised of wall paintings of the maps and projec-
tions of photographic stilis that reflected Hobbs'
and Neustetter's tour of Dakar on foot and docu-
mented their interactions with people they met
along the way.

The exhibition was designed as a reflec-
tion on racial and ethnic changes in the so-
cial fabric of Dakar and in the artists' home-
town of Johannesburg. UrbaNET was included
in Johannesburg's "Sightings/Site-ings of the
African City" conference, held atthe Wits Institute
of Social and Economic Research in June 2006.
The projects last iteration was an audio-visual
presentation and discussion forum in which
Senegalese immigrants were able to examine and
compare the findings from Johannesburg and
Dakar.

Top to bottom: Attendees enjoy the Seventh Festival de Performance de Cali in
2008. For the Coco Show, a market event organized by Helena Producciones,
artisans displayed and sold their products in the main street in Cali. (Courtesy
Helena Producciones)

172

LIVING AS FORM

FRANIUCH

SPACEBANK

2005 -

Spacebank is a Virtual community investment
bank that uses traditional capitalist trading struc-
tures in tandem with an alternate, fictional cur-
rency in order to promote anti-capitalist values.
Spacebank clients can open functioning bank
accounts, invest in established stock exchanges,
buy bonds, and trade, all using the Digital Maoist
Sunflower network currency, which is backed by

the labor of its founder, Fran llich, a media art¬
ist, writer, and activist. The Spacebank network
allows participants to "purify their money" by in-
vesting in socially conscious projects involving
art and activism, including a community farmers
market, through a micro-financing program. As
Spacebank 's mission states, "We help you reach
your objectives... without hurting others."

llich operates Spacebank under his umbrel-
la D.I.Y. media conglomerate Diego de la Vega,
which takes its name from the 'true' identity of
the fictional pulp character Zorro. Diego de la
Vega, a limited liability corporation that llich
started with fifty pesos, now hosts a web server
(Possibleworlds.org), a research and development
initiative on narrative media (Ficcion.de), a col-
lective online radio (Radiolatina.am), a communi¬
ty newspaper (elzorro.org), and a think-tank called
Collective Intelligence Agency (ci-a.info).

Cuentas en Spacebank

H Mexico

■ USA

I Austria
H Espana
I Alemania

■ Turquia

■ Argentina
I Colombia

Above: Although account holders are located primarily in Mexico, people from
all over the world have opened Spacebank accounts (Courtesy Fran llich).

TELLERVO KALLEINEN AND
OLIVER KOCHTA-KALLEINEN

COMPLAINTS CHOIR

2005 -

As organizers of Complaints Choir, Tellervo
Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen have heard
it all: "My dreams are boring." "My grandmother
is a racist." "My neighbor organizes Hungarian
folk dances above my bedroom." "I am fat and
lazy and half-old." Since 2005, the artists, who
live in Helsinki, Finland, have invited people to
sing their gripes in unison, in public, and online.
The process is simple. First, invite others. Then,
find a good musician. Once complaints are col-
lected, written in verse, and rehearsed, partici-
pants are asked to record a public performance
and submit it to the Complaints Choir website,
a warehouse for songs with submissions from
Japan to Chicago. Complaints include the overtly
political—for example, social injustices in a small,
Brazilian town-to the deeply personal, like hav-
ing too much sex on the brain. The private, the
personal, can be very political," Kalleinen and

7bp to bottom: The Complaints Choir of St. Petersburg performmg in 2006
(Photograph by Yuiiy Rumiantsev). The Complaints Choir of Helsinki rehearses
in 2006 (Photograph by Heidi Piiroinen).

174

LIVING AS FORM

Kochta-Kalleinen write on their website. '"I have
too much time!' can be seen as a personal trag-
edy, but also points to a major defect in capitalis-
tic society, which sidelines people because they
are of no use in the production cycle." In Cairo,
Egypt, a recent complaints choir drew so much in-
terest and such large crowds, that it evolved into
the "Choir Project," an ongoing, local version that
generates reflections and concerns about politi-
cal conditions in the region.

Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen make work
that often documents daily experiences, such as
on-the-job mishaps, and doctor-patient relation-
ships. The artists first got the idea for Complaints
Choir while living in Finland, where the word for
those who complain literally translates to "com-
plaint choir." They compiled their first choir in
Birmingham, England, with the help of two arts or-
ganizations; since then, over seventy choirs have
formed around the world.

PROJECTS

175

AMAL KENAWY

S1LENCE OF THE LAMBS

2010

In December 2010, while citizens across the
Middle East rose in widespread political unrest,
fifteen men and women crawled across a busy
Cairo intersection on their hands and knees, at
the instruction of Egyptian artist Amal Kenawy.
The performers, who included Kenawy's brother,
a curator, and a dozen hired day laborers, moved
slowly in a single file line, impeding traffic and
drawing a large, emotionally charged crowd. Some
passersby were annoyed by the halt of midday
travel; others protested the potential critique of
the state that triggered the act, as well as the sub-
missive behavior of the men in line. Many people
filmed and photographed the performance, which
took place during the opening of 25th Alexandria
Biennale and an international curatorial workshop
in Cairo, organized by Tate. The artist and partici-
pants were eventually arrested, and briefly impris-
oned, once heated tempers turned violent. On the
surface, the action seemed to simply jar the daily
routine of people on the street; yet, their ensuing
reactions reflected an underlying conservatism,
and undercurrent of tension rampant in the region.

Kenawys Silence of the Lambs was commis-
sioned for the exhibition Assume the Position at
Cairo's Townhouse Gallery for Contemporary Art,
and included photographs and videos as well as
newspaper clippings of the event. The perfor¬
mance was scheduled to occur twice, marking the

opening and closing of the exhibition. However,
the second iteration was cancelled before the
show's end, in fear of inciting further conflict on
the street.

SURASIKUSOLWONG

MINIMAL FACTORY/

($1 MARKEI)/

REP BULL PART/ (WITH D.J.)

2002

Black Friday. Christmas Eve. End-of-season
sales. If you've ever visited a shopping mall, a de-
partment store, or an outlet center you've experi-
enced the frenzy and emotional high of material
consumption that fascinates Thai artist Surasi
Kusolwong. Imagine a dimly-lit, factory-like space
scattered with long tables in primary colors. Each
table is heaped with a seemingly random assort-
ment of goods, like a clandestine rummage sale:
washing baskets, soup lad les, footballs, space in- i
vader machines, inflatable toys, and footballs. As
you peruse the space, a DJ pumps loud, energetic
dance music and a counter offers cold cans of Red
Bull. Other shoppers swarm over the abundance
of goods, piling baskets high with colorful items,
all on sale for $1 each.

This is Kusolwongs Minimal Factory/($l
Market)/Red Bull Party (with D.J.), part of his
touring Market project. Exploring the intersection
of art, consumption, and community, Kusolwong

Opposite, top to bottom: The Complamts Choir of St. Petersburg performing in
2006 (Photograph by Yuriy Rumiantsev). The first Complaints Choir was formed
in Birmingham in 2005 (Photograph by Springhill Institute).

176

LIVING AS FORM

1 EURO
BLINKY
MARKET
(DUMME

recreates a typical Thai market with cheap goods
purchased en masse in Bangkok. As shoppers
fawn over the Thai-manufacture goods—made
precious by their exotic origin and the gallery set¬
ting—Kusolwong intends the thumping music and
beverage service to draw out the social interac-
tions inherent to the consumer experience.

Kusolwong s practice navigates between pub¬
lic and private spaces, playing with concepts of
both economic and cultural values, and the dia-
logue between people, art, and consumer prod-

7b p to bottom: At the 1 Euro Blinky Market (Dumme Kiste) in 2006 at West-
faelische Kunstverein, Munster, Germany, over 2,000 everyday objects from
Thailand were sold for one euro each. For the Cork Caucus in 2005, Kusolwong
invited various local market vendors to take part in 1 Euro BangCork Market,
which took place over three days, (Courtesy of Surasi Kusolwong)

ucts. His interactive installation Golden Ghost
(The Future Belongs To Ghosts), which was com-
missioned for Creative Times 2011 exhibition
Living as Form, was composed of large piles of
multicolored, tangled thread waste—a byproduct
of textile production. Hidden within the thread
waste were gold necklaces designed by the artist.
Visitors were invited to dig through the sea of del-
icate knots in search of the jewelry. Every week,
the artist added another piece of jewelry to what
he called the "economic landscape."

7bp to bottom: 1,000Lire Market (La vita continua), 2001, featured various
everyday objects sold for 1,000 Lire m the main square of Casole d'Elsa, Sh
enna, ltaly. The 10 Kronor Market (ohne die Rose tun wir'snicht) featured Thai
goods for sale for ten Kronor each at the Rooseum Center for Contemporary
Art, Malmo, Sweden, in 2004. (Courtesy of Surasi Kusolwong)

PROJECTS

177

BRONWYN LACE
AND ANTHEA MOYS

EN MASSE

2010 -

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The first step in solving problems may be
learning how to talk about them, and by appreci-
ating what Johannesburg-based artists Anthea
Moys and Bronwyn Lace consider to be the vastly
underappreciated components of the Creative pro-
cess: "those aspects of becoming inspired, brain-
storming, sharing, and debating." In 2010, they
launched En Masse, a several-year, multi-step
effort to suggest working models for environmen-
tal activism by first bringing together a group of
forty-nine artists, architects, science educators,
engineers, and curators at the Bag Factory Artists'
Studios, where Lace serves as education direc-
tor—then implementing their ideas in subsequent
phases. Attendees of these initial workshops par-
ticipated in eight three-hour conversations. Lace
and Moys presented the results of the workshop
sessions in an exhibition, which included instal-
lations, audio recordings of the conversations,
drawings, and textual documentation.

The discussions and exhibition in 2010 in-
troduced participants to one another and then
encouraged people to develop ideas in collabora-
tion. For example. Metro Mass—a proposed solu-
tion to Johannesburgs problematic public trans-
portation—calls for over 5,000 suburbanites from
the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Area to
give up their vehicles on a given day.

Top; Lace and Moys produced a series of workshops, exhibitions, performanc-
es, and a book. Bottom row: The installation of En Masse included linked text
and images (Courtesy Bronwyn Lace and Anthea Moys).

178

LIVING AS FORM

SUZANNE LACY

THE RQQF1$ ON FIRE

1994

For one afternoon in 1994, two hundred
and twenty high school students in Oakland,
California, sat in parked cars on a rooftop garage
and talked to each other about violence, sex, gen-
der, family, and race. The teens spoke candidly,
without any kind of script, while an audience of
nearly one thousand people—including numer-
ous reporters and camera crews—walked from car
to car, leaning in and bending over, to hear their
conversations through rolled-down windows. The
resulting footage of the performance, called The
Roof Is On Fire, was aired locally on multiple net-
works and nationally on CNN.

Oakland teens were already accustomed to
receiving media attention, though largely through

negative portrayals of young people involved in
riots, violence, and conflicts with police. This
event, however, which was organized by artist
Suzanne Lacy in conjunction with TEAM (a group
of teens, educators, artists, and media workers),
was designed as a positive media spectacle, with
young people depicted as citizens rather than li-
abilities. For five months, Lacy met weekly with
teachers and teens, including those from a nearby
probation program, to discuss issues important
to them, and to craft a message for civic lead-
ers about the role of young people in Oaklands
future. The Roof Is On Fire reflected the crux of
those discussions, as well as Lacys decades-long
mission to counter misleading media images with
empowered, community-oriented actions. Since
the 1970s, she has created performances that
offer alternative narratives and interpretations of
news coverage. For example, In Mourning and In
Rage presented a public ritual on the steps of Los
Angeles' City Hall in response to coverage of the
murders of 10 women in December 1977. While
the stories focused on the random nature of the
violence, Lacys collaborative performance was a
call to action, and reframing of the killing spree
from a feminist perspective.

Above; Four Oakland teens that participated in Lacy’s The Roof Is On Fire
candidly discuss pressing topics while an audience listens in (Courtesy
Suzanne Lacy).

PROJECTS

179

Above: The Roofls On Fire took place on the rooftop of an Oakland parking
garage one evening in 1994 (Courtesy Suzanne Lacy).

180

LIVING AS FORM

LAND FOUNDATION

THE LAND

1998 -

In 1998, artists Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin
Lertchaiprasert bought a rice field in Sanpatong,
a village 20 minutes outside of Chiang Mai,
Thailand. At the time, flooding in the area had
rendered rice cultivation difficult; instead, they
began cultivating, and experimenting with, no-
tions of utopian, socially responsible living. The
Land became a testing ground for meditation and
ideas, such as ecologically conscious systems
that don't rely on the use of electricity or gas, but
call for self-sufficiency, sustainable practices,
and natural resources. For example, harnessing
bio-mass (or fecal matter) to generate power;
creating fishing ponds filled with purified water;
building kitchens modeled to support communal
living; and installing meditation rooms.

Since purchasing the property, they have
invited artists from around the world, including
SUPERFLEX.Tobias Rehberger, Philippe Parreno
and Frangois Roche, to create projects and to build
housing structures on The Land. They also began
growing rice once the ground was viable again,
and donated the food to local villages—communi-
ties that have been ravaged by the AIDS epidemic
in the region.

Tiravanija is best known for cooking and serv-
ing Pad Thai to visitors of a Soho gallery (one of
the first instances of so-called "relational aesthet-
ics" that engages audiences as participants in¬
stead of viewers) while Lertchaiprasert's art often
explores the daily rituals, disciplines, and values
of Buddhism. Though the artists continue to live
on The Land, operations are managed by The Land
Foundation—an independent, anonymous group—
in an effort to disperse ownership among the
spaces users, visitors, and inhabitants.

7bp to bottom: American artist Robert Peters and Thai artist Thasnai Sethaseree
designedAsian Provision. Lin Yilin’s Whose Land? WhoseArt? consisted of
two walls, one constructed in the countryside in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and the
other in a Bangkok gallery. Farming at the Land Foundation is open to those
who wish to learn. (Courtesy The Land Foundation)

PROJECTS

181

/ \

1 M
f \

'km

Tbp to bottom: German architect and instaUation artist Markus Heinsdorff designed
the Living Bamboo Dome, which will regenerate by means of renewable construction
approximately every three years, Angknts House, a simple structure for one person
designed by Thai artist Angkrit Ajchariyasophon, was mspired by housing for Buddhist
priests at a monastery in Chiang-Rai, Thailand. (Courtesy The Land Foundation)

Tbp to bottom: Rice paddy farming is organized in a two-crop annual cycle. Somyot &
ThaivijiCs House, by Thai artists Somyot Hananuntasuk and Thaivijit Poengkasemsom, was
conceived as a venue for sharing ideas and designed to accommodate a staging area for
performances. A Buddhist farming concept inspires the agricultural layout of the rice pad-
dies—only one quarter of the area is solid ground while the other three are water, similar to
the composition of the human body (Courtesy The Land Foundation)

182

LIVING AS FORM

LONG MARCH PROJECT

HO CHIM1NH TRAIL

2008-2011

In 2008, the Beijing-based art collective Long
March Project launched an expedition across the
Ho Chi Minh Trail, originally a secret system of
jungle pathways during the Vietnam War. Forthis
trip, also called Ho Chi Minh Trail, Long March
invited international and local curators, artists,
scholars, and students to re-walk part of the trail
while participating in panel discussions, visual
art collaborations, and other Creative actions in
cities on the itinerary. Understanding that his-
tory is as complex and branched as the 600-mile
path, Long March's program uses the trail as a
point of entry into dialogue about Vietnam's past
and present. "Though internationally understood
as a logistical supply route created during the

Second Indochina War, [the trail] formed a vast
network of passageways across China, Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia," Long March writes. Their Ho
Chi Minh Trail was envisioned as a ''nomadic resi-
dency," in these same countries, as well as their
international diasporas, with the goal of exploring
interactions the legacy of interactions among the
regions: "How can sensitive misgivings between
cultural and social communities be creatively
engaged so as to create new identifications, and
new possibilities of beneficial engagement where
... prejudices are laid aside?"

Founded by artist and writer Lu Jie, Long
March Project takes its name from the historie mil-
itary retreat of the Chinese Red Army from nation-
alisttroops in 1945. In 2002, the collective toured
the 6,000-mile historical stretch; called A Walking
Visual Display, Long March brought together 250
artists, curators, writers, theorists, and scholars
in public parks, community halls, private living
rooms, and government offices to discuss topics
such as the "ideologieal legacy of the Cultural
Revolution," and "the birth of Communism." The
trip was doeumented through photography, instal-
lations, painting, performances, symposia, and
other forums.

Åbove: The Long March Project uses the geographical pathway of the Ho Chi
Minh trail to reexamine China's socialist and revolutionary past (Courtesy Long
March Project).

PROJECTS

183

LOS ANGELES
POVERTY DEPARTMENT

AGENTS & ASSETS

2001 -

Los Angeles Poverty Department is a 26-year-
old theater company that employs homeless ac-
tors living on the citys Skid Row, one of the larg-
est homeless populations in the country. In 2001,
LAPD produced Agents & Assets, a staged perfor¬
mance of the "Report on the Central Intelligence
Agency's Alleged Involvement in Crack Cocaine
Trafficking in Los Angeles"—transcripts that were
presented to the House of Representatives after

the LA Times launched an investigation into the
charges. Though the CIA was eventually acquit-
ted, the LAPD's production explored the implica-
tions of high-level profiteering by enlisting home¬
less actors to perform as Congress members and
CIA officials. Each performance was followed by
discussions between law-enforcement officials,
audience members, and the actors involved.

In 1985, actor John Malpede founded, and
still continues to direct, LAPD, the first perfor¬
mance group in the nation comprised primarily
of homeless and formerly homeless people, giv-
ing this often silent community a voice and plat-
form to speak— not simply about the experience of
being homeless, but about the political and civic
conditions that create poverty, as well as areas
such as Skid Row. Malpede had worked with, and
advocated for the rights of, homeless populations
in New York. The theater company began as an im-
provisational group, and now primarily produces
scripted works that address injustices within the
criminal justice system. LAPD's productions are
often site-specific installations, as well as public
projects with educational programming.

Above: Agents and Assets being performed in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 2009.
(Photograph by Henriette Brouwers).

184

MAMMALIAN
DIVING REFLEX

HAIRCUTS BY CHILDREN

LIVING AS FORM

2006

For one day, fifth- and sixth-grade students
from Torontos Parkdale Public School provided
haircuts, free of charge, in hair salons across
the city. Using the tresses of mannequin heads,
they trained for one week with professional styl-
ists, learning how to trim bangs, add color, shave
necklines, create long layers, and use a blow
dryer. While adults provided supervision during
the sessions, most patrons trusted the novice
hairdressers, who worked in pairs or groups, to
make aesthetic decisions like color choices and
hair length, on their own. The project, which later
traveled internationally, culminated in a two-day
series of performances at the Milk International
Childrens Festival of the Arts back in Toronto.

Haircuts By Chiidren was organized by
Mammalian Diving Reflex, a Toronto-based arts
and research group that creates very specific in-
teractions between people in public spaces. For
Out of My League, participants were asked to ap-
proach strangers who they believed were 'out of
their league' and engage in conversation with
them. SlowDance with Teacher made high-school
teachers available for one night to slow dance with
their students. The groups name is inspired by a
self-preservation technique triggered by extreme
physical duress. For example, when the body is
suddenly submerged in water or caught in a freez-
ing environment, all major bodily functions slow
almost to a halt, minimizing the need for oxygen,
and increasing the chances of survival. To that
end, Haircuts leveraged the image of chiidren per-

forming a highly specialized, and personal, form
or labor, as well as the often-precocious nature of
10- to 12-year-olds, to convey a larger message:
If chiidren can be empowered as Creative thinkers
and decision makers, shouldn't they be allowed to
vote, too?

Above: Awoman enjoys a free haircut from students in Parkdale Public
School's Sth and 6th grade classes. Opposite: Stan Bevington receives a hair¬
cut from Amahayes Mulugeta and Dailia Linton. (Photographs by John Lauener)

PROJECTS

185

Hå?

sss&tS

LIVING AS FORM

Above: Members of The Baby Dolls pay their respect to Big Chief Allison Opposite, top to bottom: Mardi Gras Indians attend the funeral of Big Chief Al-

"Tootie" Montana (Photograph by Keith Calhoun). lison "Tootie” Montana. The funeral took place in Treme, and a large part of the

community turned out to pay their respects. (Photographs by Keith Calhoun)

MARDI GRAS
INDIAN COMMUNITY

FUNERAL PROCESSION
FOR BIG CHIEF ALLISON
<< TOOTIE >1 MONTANA

2005

Since the 1800s, working-class Blacks in
New Orleans paid tribute to Native Americans
who aided escaped slaves on their routes to safety
by "masking Indian": building and donning elabo-
rate costumes for Mardi Gras, fashioned from lay-
ers upon layers of feathers, beads, sequins, and
billowing fabrics dyed in energetic colors. For 52
years, Allison "Tootie" Montana, a construction
worker and chief of the chiefs of these Mardi Gras

Indians, lead the parade: His signature, three-
dimensional geometric designs often weighed
hundreds of pounds, costs thousands of dollars,
and earned him a National Endowments for the
Arts grant, and was the subject of feature-length
documentary. On July 10, 2005, thousands New
Orleans residents gathered to march in his funeral
procession, out of respect for his art, and his ad-
vocacy for this community.

Montana was a long-time, outspoken aavo-
cate for Mardi Gras Indians, who often faced dis-
crimination from local law enforcement. On the
night of his death, he addressed the City Council,
along with other chiefs, to protest police brutal-
ity, as well as efforts to squash Mardi Gras Indian
parades and other public gatherings. Moments
later he collapsed on the floor, and was taken
to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced
dead of a heart attack. His funeral procession,
which drew both non-lndians and Indians, was
one of the largest to trickle down the well-known
parade route from the church to the cemetery;
participants beat tambourines, chanted, and
moved like rhythmic clouds of aqua, orange, red,
and yellow smoke.

* h

r .

188

ANGELA MELITOPOULOS
AND COLLABORATORS

TIMESCAPES/B-ZONE

LIVING AS FORM

2005-2006

For three years, video artists and activ-
ists from Germany (Angela Melitopoulos and
Hito Steyerl), Serbia (Dragana Zarevac), Greece
(Freddy Viannelis), and Turkey (Octay Ince and
Videa) worked to build a shared video database
called Timescapes, which uses non-linear edit-
ing to explore collective memory and alternative
forms of filmic representation.

Through this experimental, collaborative
media, the group explored themes of mobility and
migration in "B-Zone territories"—political areas
subject to mutations, wars, and conflicts that re-
sulted from the rise of European infrastructure
projects and new routes of migration after the
fall of the Berlin Wall. These territories exist at
the crossroads of three major political regions:
Europe, the countries of the former Soviet Union,
and the Arab-lslamic World.

Each of the collaborators participating in
Timescapes/B-Zones hailed from locations along
the "old" European axis between Berlin and
Istanbul—one so-called B-Zone—and contributed
images and visualizations that, combined, sug-
gested a psychological landscape of that territory.
Going beyond a simple accumulation of images
and facts, the artists manipulate audio and visual
content as a means of questioning the suppos-
edly progressive capitalist ideology of integration.
The process has yielded two projects: Behind the
Mountain (70 min., 2005), a video essay on forced
migration in Turkey, and Corridor X (124 min.,
2006), a road movie that travels through theTenth
European Corridor between Germany and Turkey.

Timescapes/B-Zones was conceived of by
artist Angela Melitopoulos, who creates time-
based work, including experimental single-chan-
nel-tapes, video installations, video essays, docu-
mentaries, and sound pieces that focus on issues
of migration, memory, and narrative.

Above; Timescapes' video database explores “B-Zone territories," which
are the political areas affected by the fall of the Berlin Wall (Courtesy Angela
Melitopoulos).

PROJECTS

189

Trans-European Networks (TEN)

At the moment of the outbreak of the wars in
Yugoslavia in 1992, European Union member states
agreed to build up Trans-European Networks
(Maastricht Treaty of 1992).

• Helsinki
• Tallinn

The opening of borders to free passage of persons
and goods which today helps to guarantee the
economic and social cohesion of the European
domestic market, is not only an instrumentto spur
growth and employment but it is the most important

instrument of European eastward expansion which Riga •

drives Capital flow and points the way for future
economic policies.

The Trans-European Networks projects have lead
to the Pan-European Transport Networks (PETRA)
and the TRACECA Programs connecting
Europe with China.

Klaipeda

Kaliningrad

These programs are valued to be one of the large£f dan | k
infrastructure projects of the world.

Vilnius

IVIinsk*

Nijm Novgorod

• Moscow

Berlin •

• •

Torun Warsaw

Dresden •

Lviv

♦ Kiev Corridor 3 across Eastern Euiope is
now being planned to extend to China

Nuremberg

# Prague

Ostrava*

Vienna

# Zilina

Bratislava

♦ Budapest

| Uzgorod

Chisinau*

Odessa

Ljublja

Bucharest

Venice

Rijeka

• Constantza

• Varna

The Trans-European Networks (TEN) comprise three
sectors: transport, energy and telecommunications.
They primarily consist of ten corridors (Corridor 1-10).

Corridors are not only superhighways but also railway
lines, harbours, waterways and pipelines.

The completion of the Trans-European Networks
through public-private partnerships (cost estimation
400 billion Euros). It requires investment in research
and development, international organizations of
experts and the improvementof financial institutions
in collaboration with the European Investment Bank.

Istanbul

Alexandroupolis

Igoumentitsa

Åbove: The Trans-European Networks consists of ten corridors that connect
parts of Eastern European (Courtesy Angela Mehtopoulos).

CHOI

ZAYDMINTY

BLACK ARTS
COLLECTIVE

In the late 1990s, South Africa-based cultural
planner and researcher Zayd Minty became aware
that artists in his home city lacked adequate spac-
es in which to openly discuss their practices. It
was also clear that many black artists still felt in¬
visible in post-Apartheid South Africa. According
to one artist who later worked with Minty, the city
lacked "a place where I could feel both safe and
intellectually stimulated...[a place] that allowed
me to explore the complex and often contradic-
tory race politics of post-1994 South Africa."
Drawing inspiration from the Robben Island Artist
Residency Program and other successful artist

exchange programs, Minty founded the Black Arts
Collective (BLAC) in late 1998 with an inaugural
seminar held at the Old Granary building in Cape
Town.

For five years, BLAC provided a forum for
"discourse building" and explored issues of race,
power, and identity through workshops, semi-
nars, articles, public art projects, and a website.
Intentionally temporary in its duration, BLAC
aimed to address specific, local moments and
concerns, sidestepping larger "grand narratives"
about race relations. The loose collective of art¬
ists, working across media, met regularly to dis-

Top row, left to right: Donovan Ward's Leisure Time billboard sat opposite
Guga S'thebe Multipurpose Centre in Langa, South Africa (Photograph by
Nic Aldndge, Courtesy BLAC). Mustafa Maluka's postcard Choice was a part
of Retuming the Gaze, an exhibition in Cape Town in 2000 (Art by Mustafa
Maluka, Courtesy BLAC).

Bottom row, left to right: A mural on Klipfontein Road was a part of Retuming
the Gaze (Photograph by Nic Aldridge, Courtesy BLAC). The Leisure Time
billboard by Donovan Ward was designed for Retuming the Gaze at the 2000
Cape Town One City Festival (Art by Donovan Ward, Courtesy BLAC).

PROJECTS

191

cuss contemporary black identity, even at times
questioning the use of the term at all.

The project adopted a three-fold strategy: to
create discussions (through the seminar series
and commissioning of articles), to document and
publish (through the website project Blaconline),
and to provide a platform for production. Several
specific public exhibitions took place during this
period, including the exhibition "Returning the
Gaze" at the 2000 Cape Town One City Festival.
The organization served as both an investigation
into the cultural politics of black identity as it re-
lates to art, and a professional resource for black
artists in Cape Town.

THE MOBILE ACADEMY

THE BLACKMARKET FOR
USEFUL KNOWLEDGE AND
NON-KNOWLEDGE

2005 -

Visitors to The Btackmarket for Useful
Knowledge andNon-Knowledge can book 30-min-
ute sessions with experts on a range of subjects,
from sex and politics to esoteric word games and
the meaning of life. In the fashion of speed dating,
student and teacher sit across from each other,
separated by small, dimly lit tables, while crowds
of people wander and eavesdrop in an effort to
preview the discussions before choosing among
the roughly 100 topics. This traveling event usu-

ally takes place in spaces associated with learn-
ing or communication, such as theaters or reading
rooms—eschewing privileged transfers of knowl¬
edge for shared, non-hierarchical exchanges.

Organized by The Mobile Academy's cura-
tor Hannah Hurtzig, Btackmarket has occurred in
Berlin, Istanbul, Liverpool, and Jaffa, among other
locations. The Mobile Academy is an umbrella
for projects she initiates with a rotating group of
collaborators.

Hurtzig founded The Mobile Academy in 1999,
after a long career in theater, particularly experi-
mental German productions focused on disturb-
ing the illusions inherent in representation, which
influenced both Btackmarket and The Mobile
Academy. For example, unscripted conversations
with non-actors (like call-center workers and poli-
ticians); incorporating food in performances; and i
staging prohibitively long events that forces audi-
ences to notice their own physical presence and
responses. She creates public access to educa¬
tional resources such as sound archives, film ar-
chives, and theater installations—projects with an
educational, participatory bent.

Above: At the Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No. 10
in Vienna in 2008, up to 100 experts shared their knowledge with parhcipants in
half-hour increments (Photograph by Dorothea Wimmer).

192

LIVING A5 FORM

MUJERES CREANDO

DUEDORAS

2001 -

In 2001, over 6,000 people traveled from
Bolivias provinces to its Capital La Paz to protest
the loss of their businesses and hornes, and ensu-
ing bankruptcy, due to crippling interest rates on
microcredit loans. Called Duedoras, or "debtors,"
this group of primarily low-income women occu-
pied the streets while their family members, out
of financial desperation, committed suicide back
home. By July, the demonstrations, which had
generated little response from the government,
escalated: the Duedoras began taking hostages in
city buildings, and engaged in violent confronta-
tion with the police.

To mitigate the situation, and prompt nego-
tiations, the self-described anarcho-feminist
collective Mujeres Creando (Creative Women),
began organizing peaceful activities that would
allow the Duedoras to be heard publicly, while
rebuilding relationships with stakeholders. This
included the creation of a public mural bearing
the paint-dipped footprints of protesters (which
symbolized their long journey); a series of finan¬
cial management courses; and other non-violent
street actions.

Founded in 1992 by activists Julieta Paredes,
Maria Galindo and Monica Mendoza, Mujeres
Creando are best known for their anti-capitalist
messages disseminated as elegantly scripted,
public graffiti. Since its inception, the collective
has also published an independent newspaper,
opened a café, and broadcast a public interest
television program, while collaborating with uni-
versities, unions, and rural workers to devise chal-
lenges to corporate and neoliberal activities.

Above, top to bottom, Mujeres Creando mtervene m a clash between insolvent
Bolivian women and the police. The Mujeres Creando have developed the
concept of Estado Proxeneta (Pimp State), as evidenced in this graffiti read-
ing "Pimp State; I do not want prostitution, I want work,” (Courtesy Mujeres
Creando)

PROJECTS

193

Åbove: The performance of Virgin Barbie was shown as part of the exhibition
Principio Potosi (Courtesy Mujeres Creando)

194

VIK MUNIZ

PICTURES OF GARBAGE

LIVING AS FORM

2008

"What I want to be able to do is change the
lives of people with the same materials they
deal with every day," says artist Vik Muniz in
Wasteland, a documentary film that follows the
production of his photographic series Pictures of
Garbage. In 2008, Muniz traveled to Brazil, where
he was bom and raised, to work with garbage
pickers from Jardim Gramacho, a 321-acre, open-
air dump, the largest in South America, located
just outside of Rio. An informal and marginalized
labor source, these workers scavenge the garbage
that arrives daily, searching for recyclable items to
selt. Muniz enlisted them to help him design, and
then pose for, massive portraits composed of the
collected detritus. The resulting works conjure
classical portraiture in which his collaborators
are elevated to mythical status amid the trash that
looks deceptively like precious material, or thick,
glimmering paint.

Muniz lifted more than just the workers' image
through his art. He paid all participants for their
time and contributed materials. He also auctioned
off the works, and donated his share of the sales
to the Garbage Pickers Association of Jardim
Gramacho, the workers' representative body.
Most significantly, he continued to collaborate
with them to help enact a formal recycling pro¬
gram in Brazil, bring awareness of their labor to
a wider public, and bolster a sense of dignity in
this historically underrepresented community and
more. In the past few years, plans to close Jardim
Gramacho—and implement the first widespread,
national recycling program in the country—have
surfaced.

Pictures of Garbage typifies much of Muniz's
work—near trompe l'oeil in his use of lay materi¬
als from syrup to peanut butter to figurines. To
produce these photographs, which have been ex-
hibited globally, he spent two years at the land-

Tbp: Muniz used material from a dump in Rio de Janeiro to create this enor-
mous portrait of a car/ao, a garbage picker, inspired by the Famese Atlas
sculpture (Courtesy Vik Muniz),

PROJECTS

195

Chiang Mai's Warorot Market, which dates
back to the 19th century, is best characterized
by the word "epic": The densely packed stalls
and stores feature inexhaustible rows of wares,
from vegetables and chickens to brightly dyed
textiles and plastic knick-knacks. Likewise, the
market's population has become an equally di¬
verse cross-section of religious and ethnic iden-
tities over the years. Artist Navin Rawanchaikul
grew up working in his familys fabric store amid
the complex, cultural mélange. To celebrate the
market's centennial anniversary, he organized
an arts festival called Mahakåd, inspired by the
markets history, that included site-specific in-
stallations and events as well as two-dimensional
works such as historical photographs; portraits
of its current inhabitants; and a vast, monochro-
matic mural depicting 200 community members.
In reference to the international scope of the mar¬
ket, visitors were given maps of the space, and
leaflets designed to look like "passports," which
could be stamped at each art station. After receiv-
ing ten stamps, visitors were eligible to receive a
free magazine that recounts Mahåkad s history.
Directed by Rawanchaikuls Navin Production
Studio, and in collaboration with several commu¬
nity groups, the festivals accompanying activities

ff LI, a common practice for the Brooklyn-based
artist who has been invested in supporting non-
profit organizations in Brazil, particularly those
that offer training and education to underserved
children.

NAVIN PRODUCTION STUDIO

MAHAKAD ART FESTIVAL:
EPIC ARTS IN THE MARKET
2010-2011

Bottom: Rawanchaikul created a large-format panoramic photograph depicting
more than 200 members of the Chiang Mai community—some living, some
long dead (Courtesy Navin Rawanchaikul)

196

LIVING AS FORM

included workshops, a tour of the project sites led
by Rawanchaikul and a panel discussion about
community engagement in contemporary art prac-
tices. The festival's title references the ancient
Indian text Mahåbhårata—a complex, network of
characters and plots that reflects the interwoven
relationships embedded in the market.

Rawanchaikul uses the realm of the every-
day as both the subject and venue of his art. He
often creates his work under the banner of Navin
Production Co., Ltd., his production company that
he founded in 1994 and launched by producing
bottled, polluted water from a canal in Chiang Mai.
In 1995, he initiated "Navin Gallery Bangkok," his
taxicab-turned-mobile art gallery.

NEUE SLOWENISCHE
KUNST (NSK)

EMBASSY IN MOSCOW

1992

Since 1984, Ljubljana, Slovenia-based art
collective Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) has
been creating paintings, posters, music, and
manifestos designed to critique governments
through incisive, satirical jabs. For example, NSK
won a Yugoslavian youth poster contest by slyly
alluding to a famous Nazi painting in its entry;
tweaked Slovenias national anthem by singing it
in German while wearing military boots; and have
repeatedly adopted the kitschy imagery and lan-
guage of totalitarianism, from hammer-wielding
workers to heavy-antlered deer, in their diverse
works. In doing so, NSK—which consists of the
band Laibach, visual art collective IRWIN, per-
formers Noordung, and graphic designers New
Collectivism—tries to dismantle these symbols

Top to bottom: NSK members and guests attend a gathenng at the Moscow
Embassy, which was established in a pnvate apartment in 1992. In addition
to hosting lectures and public discussions, the Moscow Embassy presented
paintings, posters, design work, and videos. (Photographs by Joze Suhadolnik)

PROJECT5

197

and the power structures they represent.

Yet NSK's subversive projects have also been
sincere, political acts: In 1992, after Yugoslavia
collapsed, the group virtually seceded from
Slovenia to form "State in Time," its own uto-
pian micronation. NSK produced national post-
age stamps, wrote an anthem, and issued pass-
ports seemingly authentic enough that hundreds
of people used them to cross the border out of
Sarajevo. The group also set up embassies in cit-
ies across Europe, beginning with its Embassy
in Moscow, an event that launched the "State in
Time" project. The Embassy in Moscow was mod-
eled after an exhibition series titled Apartment
Art (or APT ART), which was first organized in the
1980s by underground Russian artists looking to
escape official censorship by hosting events in
private spaces. NSK revived this history in its own
version—a month-long, live installation in a pri¬
vate apartment, bearing the emblem of a faux state
embassy on the building's fagade. The event fea-
tured lectures, talks, and visual works (primarily
produced by members of IRWIN) meant to ignite
public discussion about pressing social issues in
Eastern Europe.

NUTS SOCIETY

1998 -

Nuts Society, in Bangkok, Thailand, employs
the language of marketing and consumerism—for
example, seiling clothing, creating window sig-
nage, and packaging products—to foster social
consciousness and responsibility in daily prac-
tices. In 2002, the group printed the Thai alpha-
bet on large sheets of paper and hung the post-
ers in street-level windows. Called A Page From
Exercising Thai: A Learning Reform, the project,
commissioned by Art in General, aimed to teach
passersby how to read the Thai alphabet, using
words that represent basic values of social jus-
tice, such as "shared," "respect," and "tolerance."
Infiltrating spaces in which one would expect to
find advertising and eschewing the consumer
maxim of "more," signage encouraged viewers
to "be adequate, be sufficient, be enough." The
poster design was eventually printed on t-shirts,
which were sold in the storefront of a Cincinnati
art gallery.

For Nuts Society Tattoo Station, Nuts Society
bu i It a tattoo parlor at the Alliance Franpaise
Center in Bangkok, through which they critiqued
global consumerisrns lack of moral values using
uniquely designed tattoos. Other projects, like
the Pandora Cookie Project, which fosters child
development through the making of educational
cookies, and The New ABC of Learning promote
positive education through Creative, direct en-
gagement with language. Since forming in 1998,
Nuts Society has worked anonymously and collec-
tively in both public spaces and arts institutions
with the mission of delivering earnest messages
about civic and global life through humorous and
playful images.

198

JOHN ONEAL

JUNEBUG PRODUCTIONS/
FREE SOUTHERN THEATER

LIVING AS FORM

1980 -

!n 1963 actor, director, and playwright John
0'Neal, a former member of the Student Non-
violent Coordinating Committee, founded the
Free Southern Theater (FST), which introduced
theater to rural, Southern communities through
live performances, professional training opportu-
nities, and audience engagement programs with
the goal of exposing social injustices in African-
American communities. Since then, 0'Neal has
been a leading advocate of the view that "poli-
tics" and "art" are complementary, not opposing
terms. When the company dissolved in 1980, after
decades of involvement in the social justice and
Black Arts movements, Free Southern Theater's
last production became the first of its successor,
Junebug Productions.

A New Orleans-based nonprofit, Junebug
continues FST's tradition of developing theater,
dance, music, and other performing arts that re-
flect the experiences of African Americans in the
South by working with educators and organizers
to produce community projects, and by support-
ing residencies with high-school students. The
company, which was named after a character cre-
ated by the SNCC, Junebug Jabbo Jones—a myth-
ic storyteller who narrates the experience of life in
the Deep South—continues to use the history of
the Civil Rights Movement to explore contempo-
rary issues addressing equality and justice, such
as the disastrous social and economic conditions
that took root after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the
Gulf Coast in 2005. To that end, Junebug's plays
are informed by 0'Neal's longstanding belief that
the work of artists can help the public better un¬
derstand the notion of a "social conscience."

Top: 0’Neal in a performance at Junebug Productions, which he founded in
1963 as a cultural arm of the Civil Rights Movement (Courtesy John 0’Neal).

PROJECTS

199

ODA PROJESI

APARTMENT PROJECT

2000-2005

In 2000, artists Ozge Acikkol, Gunes Savas,
and Secil Yersel, working as the artist collective
Oda Projesi (Room Project), rented a three-room
flat in Galata, a historie urban district in Istanbul
characterized by the mixed income levels of its
residents, and the Istiklal, a well-known pedes-
trian stroll that runs through it. The area also
serves as an entertainment district where many
immigrants from Eastern Turkey gather when they
first arrive in the city. Apartment Project was Oda
Projesi's organic transformation of the private
space into a multipurpose public one, where art¬
ists, architects, musicians, neighbors, and chil-
dren would congregate informally to plan projeets,
hold get-togethers, and exist communally both
within and outside of the context of art.

Each room was equipped and designed to en-
courage Creative, communal interaction—for ex-
ample, drawing materials for children, an archive
of art books, and free meeting space. During the
collectives five-year occupation of the apartment
they hosted nearly thirty projeets, ineluding youth
theater workshops, and picnics in the courtyard;
exercises in building long-term relationships in
the neighborhood, rather than making objeets,
hosting exhibitions, or marketing the produc-
tion of art. Since its inception, Oda Projesi has
been interested in what space can mean when it
borders both public and private. To that end, the
artists, who self-financed the space, never ad-
vertised their programs, or held "open hours. In
2005, they were evicted due to a rent increase.

Top to bottom: The architectural plan of the three-room flat in Galata, Istanbul,
rented by Oda Projesi from 2000-2005 for the Apartment Project. The space
was host to nearly 30 projeets between 2000 and 2005, ineluding Erik Gdn-
grich’s Picnic in 2001. Artist Segil Yersel installed Swing in the apartment from
April 22 until May 19, 2000. (Courtesy Oda Projesi)

PARK FICTION AND
THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
NETWORK HAMBURG

1994 - .

AHOLSm

When developers bid on a prestigious river-
bank property in St. Pauli, a poor neighborhood
in Hamburg, Germany, residents faced losing the
only land in the area available for public use. But
instead of protesting, they began picnicking and
pretending that the contested site would soon
house a public park rather than a high-rise Office
building. The project—dubbed Park Fiction—was
initiated by the local residents' association and

artist Christoph Schåfer, and emerged as a viable
alternate to the citys plan, which favored commer-
cial interests over the community' desire for recre-
ational space.

The group rallied community residents to
put the park to use for festivals, exhibitions, and
talks—activities that demonstrated local culture
and encouraged citizens to take control of the
urban planning process themselves, rather than

Above: A "planning container" moved around the St. Pauli neighborhood of
Hamburg collecting residents’ wishes for the development of the area (Photo-
graph by Sven Barske, Courtesy Park Fiction).

PROJECTS

201

seek the city's permission first. Inspired by theo-
rists Gi Iles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept,
"the production of desires," Park Fiction coined
the phrase "Desires will leave the house and take
to the streets," to stress the residents' imaginative
transformation of the area.

They built a mobile "planning container"—
equipped with a telephone hotline, question-
naires, maps, and an instant camera—that became
a tool enabling members of the community to trav¬
el throughout the neighborhood to solicit input.
The container, as well as documentation of the
efforts that took place inside of it, was exhibited
at art events, including Documenta 11 in 2002.
This strategy of accumulating cultural Capital,
then leveraging it to obtain government support
in the form of funding from the citys Art in Public
Space program, proved successful. In 2005, the
city abandoned plans to seil the property. A few
months later, residents installed the first of their
enhancements to the park: fake, plastic palm trees
and rolling AstroTurf.

Tap to bottom: Nearly 1,000 spectators congregated at Park Fiction in July 2009
for a screening of Empire St. Pauli, a documentary about gentrification in the St.
Pauli neighborhood of Hamburg (Photograph by Antje Mohr, Courtesy Park Fic¬
tion). In 2005, a dog park complete with a poodle-shaped boxtree was created
in the park (Photograph by Hinrich Schulze, Courtesy Park Fiction).

202

LIVING AS FORM

PASE USTED

2008 -

In 2010, Mexico celebrated the bicentennial
of its independence movement, fostering a range
of events and activities intended to, according
the countrys bicentennial homepage, "revive the
values and ideals that shaped the nation." In an-
ticipation of the bicentennial events, nine young
people—from a range of disciplines, committed to
the sharing of ideas and creation of an open com¬
munity—founded Pase Usted in 2008.

The Mexico City-based nonprofit group pro-
motes civic change and development through
conferences that emphasize open dialogue and
community building. Bringing together experts
in various fields—civic engineering, architecture,
art, city planning, design—the platform is unified
by a shared agenda to address the most pressing
needs facing the city. While community outreach
is essential to each project, Pase Usted often en-
lists specialists to offer Solutions where other op-
tions fail. While their activities vary—ranging from
workshops to salons to exhibitions to public inter-
ventions—Pase Usted operates as an open source
network, providing individuals with the techno-
logical tools needed to promote their ideas.

On April 23, 2011, Pase Usted, represented by
Jorge Munguia, participated in a"Conversation on
Useful Art," in Corona, Queens, hosted by Cuban
artist Tariia Bruguera at the headquarters of her
project, Immigrant Movement International. The
event, which also included artists Rick Lowe, Mel
Chin, and Not An Alternative, asked participants

Above. Mexican artist Raul Cårdenas (Torolab) discusses health care issues at
a Pase Usted event (Photograph by Ariette Armella).

PROJECTS

203

to share their work in the field of so-called "Useful
Art." Pase Usted presented their work in Mexico
City, focusing on the project "Genera," for which
they made a "call for entries" to anyone with ideas
on how to better the quality of Life in Mexico City.
Theten-week program gives funding to ten select-
ed projects as a way of giving individual people
the resources to actualize their ideas.

right organization Piratbyrån, Pirate Bay is a large
bittorrent tracking website that has reshaped the
technical and legal parameters around file shar-
ing. Key to this shift is a technology called "peer-
to-peer," which deviates from standard download-
ing protocol. Traditional downloads transfer files
from a single server. However, in "peer-to-peer"
transfers, no centralized server exists; rather, file
transfers occur between multiple clients, who
send and receive only segments of files. Pirate
Bay tracks files called "torrents" that in conjunc-
tion with "torrent" programs, can find users who
share a given file. In doing so, file sharing can
occur more quickly: Since multiple locations
distribute the data, no single server can delay or
interrupt file transfers. Likewise, since no single
server can claim responsibility for the distribu-
tion of the file, copyright laws become harder to
enforce. For example, record labels, film produc-
tion companies, and software producers are less
likely to sue multiple individuals for sharing files
intended to be used only for personal use.

PIRATBYRÅN
(THE BUREAU OF PIRACY)

THE PIRATE BAY

2003 -

Launched in 2003 by the Swedish anti-copy-

Above; Harvard education specialist Dr. Gabnel Cåmara speaks to an engaged
audience about the education revolution at a Pase Usted event (Photographs by
Anette Armella).

204

LIVING AS FORM

PLATFORMA 9.81

1999 -

Platforma 9.81 is a Croatian group of archi-
tects, theorists, designers and urban planners.
Founded in 1999 as an NGO, its aim has been to
generate interdisciplinary debate on the culture of
urban spaces, digitalization of the environment,
effects of globalization, and shift in architectural
practices. They have examined, for example, the
layers in the urban fabric of Zagreb and its recent
building projects, which reveal shifts in power
structures induced by the transition from commu-
nism to capitalism.

Part of the group has concentrated on the
Croatian coast and islands. For the project Tourist
Transformation, Platforma members Dinko Peracic
and Miranda Veljacic researched the rapid chang-
es marked by global Capital and tourism during the
past decade. Their work has been driven by an in-
terest in transformations in the built environment,
such as the differing expectations, desires, and
experiences of residents versus tourists, or the
seasonal fluctuations. To that end, their practice
traces the precarious balance between the envi¬
ronment and its habitants. They consider what the
landscape might look like tomorrow, and the po-
tential cultural implications that occur when rela-
tively untouched regions undergo development.

Peracic and Veljacic have previously worked
in another island location, the Lofoten Islands in
Northern Norway. Their The Weather Project fo-
cused on the weather's effects on residents and
visitors. They collected proposals from the public

Top to bottom: For their Invisible Zagreb project, the group spent two years
mapping abandoned spaces in Croatia’s Capital city (Courtesy Platforma 9.81).
Platforma 9.81 has hosted a variety of activities since its inception in 1999
(Photographs by Josip Ostojic and Dinko Peracic).

PROJECTS

205

auditorium

UTILIZATION SCHEME
ORIGINAL PROJECT FROM 1978

eng in e room

entrance,

AUDIENCE

leciure ro oms

direction

service area

entrance + info center

e-tinel

media library

entrance

gymnasium

art cinema

lecture rooms

UTILIZATION SCHEME
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN 2008

workshops media lab residences

auditorium

stage constr jction

engine room

service area

direction

offices residence

rehearsal

wardrobe

workshops and technics

skate park

Above: Tbchnical drawings showing a Croatian building's original utilization
scheme from 1978 (top) and Platform 9.81's 2008 scheme Ulustrating proposed
utilization (bottom). (Courtesy Platforma 9.81)

206

LIVING AS FORM

for ways of communicating and sharing these ex-
periences, such as the building of a lighthouse or
creation of a line of pocket-sized souvenirs.

PUBLIC MOVEMENT

FIRST OF MAY RIOTS

2010

The recurring May Day demonstrations in
West Berlins working class Kreuzberg neighbor-
hood first turned violent as a way to challenge the
citys efforts to silence labor protests during the
late 1980s. However, the riots have now become
less provocative, drawing audiences, as well as
anti-capitalist protesters, from far-reaching lo-
cales across Europe.

Last year, Israeli artists Dana Yahalomi and
Omer Krieger, who work together under the name
Public Movement, marked May 1 by creating five
radio channels of commentary and music as a
soundtrack for the riots, and loaning visitors free
mobile headsets during the event. Listeners could
choose among the following tracks: two sociolo-
gists discussing the demonstration while observ-
ing it; a live musical performance; a pre-recorded
talk by a philosopher; archival material from a
past May 1 riot; and a DJ playing dance music.
The project, which was commissioned by Berlins
Hebbel-Am-Ufer theater, allowed participants
to consider the staged protest as a kind of per¬
formance, and to examine its position within the
history of leftwing resistance to the state in this
region. In doing so, Public Movement reframes the
protest as a demonstration about demonstrations,
rather than a reaction against specific issues.

Yahalomi and Kreiger stage performances in
public space that test the possibilities for collec-
tive political action. Since 2006, the artists have
organized what they call "manifestations of pres-
ence, fictional acts of hatred, new folk dances,
synchronized procedures of movement, spec-
tacles, marches, and re-enactments of specific
moments in the lives of individuals, communi-
ties, social institutions, peoples, states, and of
hu man i ty."

Above , top to bottom: Platforma 9.81 ran a graffiti contest for artists to decorate
the outside of the building (Courtesy Platforma 9.81). Images of Croatian
buildings whose use has been examined and debated by Platforma 9.81.
(Photographs by Sandro Lendler and Dinko Peracic)

PROJECTS

207

s ERF0RMING POLITICS
OR GERMANY.

PUBLIC I

MOVEMENTI

Above. clockwise from top left; Public Movement is a performative research
body that investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. Members
of Public Movement take part in the performance Æso Thusl. (Courtesy Public
Movement)

PULSKA GRUPA

KATARINA

2009

Pulska Grupa is a group of architects and
urban planners based in Pula, Croatia, who focus
on reclamation of public land, and "self-organized
urbanism" in Pula and along the Adriatic coast-
line. After the end of World War II, the Katarina-
Monumenti region of Pula—a restricted military
zone—became the private residence of former
Yugoslovian Communist leader, Josip Broz Tito.
After one hundred years of occupation, the area
was recently demilitarized and opened for poten-
tial new uses. Pulska Grupa organized student
workshops to generate ideas for public use and to
discuss ways to integrate the military infrastruc-

ture into civilian space. Workshops took place in
renovated former barracks. Proposals included
galleries and art studios, as well as a university
center, post offices, and restaurants. A map of the
area—imagined as a park—was produced to intro-
duce the local population to the citys expanded
space. More recently, Pulska Grupa initiated cul-
tural programming in the Monumenti infrastruc-
ture, such as music festivals, in order to generate
awareness of the debate over the compound, and
to garner support of their plans to implement non-
privatized plans for its future. The group's eight
members, Ivana Debeljuh, Vjekoslav Gasparovic,

Above: When a formerly restricted military zone became open to the public in
2006, Pulska Grupa organized workshops to generate ideas for its use (Courtesy
Pulska Grupa).

PROJECTS

209

Emil Jurcan, Jerolim Mladinov, Marko Percic, Sara
Perovic, Helena Sterpin and Edna Strenja, actively
challenge municipal and state plans for Katarina
by producing publications, demonstrations, and
exhibitions. "We imagine the city as a collective
space which belongs to all those who live in it,"
they write in the group's manifesto, "They have the
right to experience the conditions for their politi-
cal, social, economic and ecological futfillment
while assuming duties of solidarity."

A : B_ I c

Tbp to bottom: Pulska Grupa hosted the Post-capitahst City Conference in 2009
(Photograph by Dejan Stifani). A map of the area was produced by Pulska Grupa to
introduce the local population to Pula's expanded space (Courtesy Pulska Grupa).

210

LIVING AS FORM

PEDRO REYES

PALAS POR PISTOLAS
(P1STOLSINTO SPAPES)
2008

In 2008, artist Pedro Reyes collected 1,527
firearms from residents of Culiacån, a western
Mexican city known fordrug trafficking and a high
rate of fatal gunfire. Almost every resident knows
someone who has been killed in a drug war. The
weapons were steamrolled into a mass of flatte ned
metal on a military base, melted at a foundry, then
recast as shovels, which were used to plant trees
on public school grounds. Reyes solicited gun
donations by broadcasting announcements on
a local television station, and, in exchange, of-
fered vouchers for discounted electronics and

appliances that could be redeemed in domes-
tic shops. From the metal, Reyes created 1,527
shovels, and planted 1,527 trees across the city.
Called Palas Por Pistolas, the project was origi-
nally commissioned by the Botanical Garden in
Culiacån. Since then, the shovels, which bear
labels explaining the history of the material used
to produce them, have been installed in numer-
ous exhibitions, and continue to be used to plant
trees in locales across the globe. "This ritual has
a pedagogical purpose of showing how an agent
of death can become an agent of Life," Reyes
hassaid.

Trained as an architect, Reyes is known for
his architectural structures and his performance
and video work from the early 2000s. Some of his
public projects include the penetrable sculptures
also known as capulas (2001 to 2009); and Baby
Marx , a television show that started through his
work with Japanese puppet makers and grew into
a commercial TV series. Through his expanded
notion of sculpture, he aims to create Solutions
to social problems by creating room for individual
and collective agency in the process.

Above . Residents of Culiacån exchanged guns for vouchers that could be used
to purchase domestic appliances and electronics (Courtesy Pedro Reyes and
LABOR).

Opposite: Dunng Reyes 1 campaign, 1,527 guns were collected from residents of
Culiacån. Shovels molded from melted-down gun metal were ultimately used to
plant trees m Culiacån (Courtesy Pedro Reyes and LABOR).

PROJECTS

211

K '

r n

212

LIVING AS FORM

LAURIE JO REYNOLDS

TAMMS YEAR TEN
2008 -

Tamms C-MAX is a supermax prison in South¬
ern Illinois designed for the solitary confinement
and sensory deprivation of men who have been
violent or disruptive in other Illinois prisons. For
at least 23 hours a day, men sit alone in seven-
by twelve-foot cells. Meals are delivered through
a slot in the door. There are no phone calls, jobs,
programming, or scheduled activities. Before see-
ing visitors, men are strip-searched and chained
to concrete stools. When the prison opened in
1998, prisoners were told they would be there for
one year, yet one-third were still there after a de-
cade. In an international human rights framework,

indefinite long-term isolation is considered cruel,
inhumane, and degrading treatment.

The Tamms Poetry Committee was a group of
artists who started a poetry exchange with men at
Tamms to provide them with social contact, and
spread awareness about the harm caused by soli¬
tary confinement. At the urging of the prisoners,
the group began to implement what organizer and
artist Laurie Jo Reynolds called "legislative art
in order to establish oversight and end the worst
abuses at the supermax. Thus, the Tamms Year
Ten campaign, which was launched at the ten-
year anniversary of the opening of the prison. This
volunteer, grassroots coalition of prisoners, for¬
mer prisoners, families, friends, attorneys, artists,
and concerned citizens organized hearings be¬
fore the Illinois House Prison Reform Committee,
introduced legislation, and held dozens of public
events and demonstrations. Their work resulted in
the creation of a promising Ten-Point Plan for re¬
form, which has still not been fully implemented.
Tamms Year Ten also supports cultural projects.
Supermax Subscriptions allows people to order
magazine subscriptions for men at Tamms. The
new Photos for Prisoners project invites prison¬
ers to request a picture of anything—real or imag-
ined—and then finds an artist to fillthe request.

Above: A Tamms Year Tbn mud stencil designed by Matthias Tfegan outside the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (Photograph by Sam Barnett).

PROJECTS

213

ATHI-PATRA RUGA

MISS CONGO

2007

Johannesburg-based artist Athi-Patra Ruga
has a habit of inserting himself into challenging
situations. He once sat in the middle of a basket¬
ball court, mid-game, wearing Jane Fonda-eraaer-
obics gear. He also teetered in stiletto heels and
a black sheep costume atop a hill in Switzerland,
while corralled in a pen with actual, white sheep.
In each case, Ruga—whose work spans perfor¬
mance, video, and fashion—confronts prevailing
racial, sexual and cultural stereotypes by creating
characters that embody extreme manifestations of
those same stereotypes.

In 2006, he conceived of Miss Congo, a char-
acter dressed in drag and born out of the racial
and gender inequities the artist witnessed while
in Senegal. "[Miss Congo] represented ideas
of displacement, of not belonging," he says. For
one year. Ruga, in character as Miss Congo, trav-
eled to public spaces and wove tapestries while
passersby observed him. The character eventu-
ally became the subject of a three-channel video
documentary. Miss Congo, in 2007. The film de-
picts three of Rugas performances—solemn and
lonely, but with a distinct undercurrent of humor
and sensuality—that were carried out in Kinshasa,
Democratic Republic of Congo. The artist stitches
a tapestry while sitting or lying in anonymous lo-
cations on the outskirts of the city, performing a
traditionally domestic task far outside the domes-
tic sphere.

Ruga has called these performances "craft
meditations"—interventions into public spaces
that draw upon his practice of working with tex-
tiles and cross-dressing to express complex, lay-
ered notions of cultural and individual identity.
The Miss Congo character also allows the artist to
explore themes of place and belonging, exercising
autonomy by choosing isolation and distance.

Above: Stilis from the artist's three-channel video Miss Congo (2007) show
him weavrng and reworking found tapestry in various locations (Courtesy
Whatiftheworld Gallery and Athi Patra Ruga).

214

THE SAN FRANCISCO
CACOPHONY SOCIETY

KIHyOURTV

LIVING AS FORM

SARAI AND ANKUR

CYBERMOHALLA ENSEMBLE

1994

Years before the television show Jackass en-
tered the popular imagination, The San Francisco
Cacophony Society began subverting main-
stream behavior through public pranks: for exam-
ple, passing pre-lit cigarettes to runners during
a city marathon, and pretending to take a group
shower in a hotel elevator. The twenty-five-year-
old club has altered billboards, infiltrated city
buses in clown costumes, and held formal dress
parties in laundromats—all in the name of "apo-
litical, nonsensical non-conformity," according to
the groups manifesto. On October 22, 1994, two
Cacophonists, Kevin Evans and John Law, orga-
nizedtheevent KillYourTV, during which 500 ful-
ly-functioning televisions were smashed, burned,
and dropped from a three-story rooftop.

The San Francisco Cacophony Society, which
has often been described as a second-wave Dada
movement, began as an offshoot of "The Suicide
Club," an underground event series launched
in 1977 that aimed to get people to experience
new things, generally in private. Cacophonists,
on the other hand, perform in public, with chap-
ters in numerous national cities, including Los
Angeles, Ann Arbor, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and
Chicago. The original San Francisco branch of the
Cacophony Society was involved early on in the
annual Burning Man festival, and is credited with
launching the first SantaCon—a non-religious
"Santa Claus" convention for those who dress in
holiday gear year-round. The group also served
as inspiration for Chuck Palahniuks "Project
Mayhem," the fictional organization in his 1996
novel Fight Club.

2001 -

Cybermohalla Ensemble is a collective of
practitioners and writers that emerged from the
project called Cybermohalla, a network of dis-
persed labs for experimentation and exploration
among young people in different neighborhoods
of the city. Cybermohalla was launched in 2001 by
two Delhi-based think tanks, Ankur: Society for
Alternatives in Education and Sarai-CSDS. Over
the years, the collective has produced a very wide
range of materials, practices, works and struc-
tures. Their work has circulated and been shown
in online journals, radio broadcasts, publications,
neighborhood gatherings, contemporary and new
media art exhibitions. Cybermohalla Ensemble's
significant publications include Bahurupiya
Shehr and Trickster City. Their forthcoming pub-
lication, in collaboration with Frankfurt-based ar-
chitects Nikolaus Hirsch and Michel Muller, is a
consolidation of the conversations, designs, and
efforts over the last few years to carve out a lan-
guage and a practice for imagining and animating
structures of cultural spaces in contemporary cit¬
ies. Cybermohalla Ensemble use verse to describe
their project:

"To Stand Before Change"

At times lava, at times water, at times
petrol: it melts, it courses, it burns.

A shadow we chase because of our sense
of connectedness.

A cunning battle with the measure of
things.

A collision of forms of life.

Movement without a fixed shore.

That which does not bend according
to you.

It becomes your own, but you cannot own it.

That which relentlessly takes on different
masks.

PROJECTS

215

CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF

PLEASE LOVE AUSTRIA

2000

After the Austrian Peoples Party coaLesced
with the right-wing, anti-immigration Freedom
Party of Austria, artist, filmmaker, and theater pro¬
ducer Christoph Schlingensief staged a perfor-
mance/reality TV show that allowed the Austrian
public to vote on the fate of asylum seekers. He
corralled twelve participants in a shipping con¬
tainer placed next to the Vienna Opera House for
one week, with webcams streaming footage to a
website. Unlike Big Brother, in which participants
vote their least favorite character out of the show,
Austrians were voting the asylum seekers out of

the country; Austrian citizens were asked to vote
two of the asylum seekers out of the country each
day, either by phoning in or east their ballot On¬
line. The remaining contestant would receive a
cash prize and the possibility of Austrian citizen-
ship through marriage.

As the performance began, Schlingensief
unfurled a flag that read, "Foreigners Out" atop
the container, along with a logo of Austrias best
seiling tabloid, Kronenzeitung; the flag referenced
the familiar right-wing slogan of "Germany for
Germans, Foreigners Out." In the end, left-wing
groups who were protesting against the Freedom
Party's Jurg Haider intervened in the performance,
surrounding the containers and demanding that
the asylum seekers be let free. They climbed on
top of the, and trashed the "Foreigners Out" slo¬
gan, eventually evacuating the asylum seekers. In
response to this disruption, Schlingensief raised
another banner, an SS slogan that had been used
by the Freedom Party, "Loyalty is Our Honour."
While his work shocked people, the artist claimed
that he was only repeating Haider's own slogans.
Schlingensief died in 2010.

Above: A sign on the container declaring, “Foreigners Out" referenced the
pervasive ractsm in Austria (Courtesy David Baitzer and Zenit).

216

FLORIAN SCHNEIDER

KEIN MENSCH IST ILLEGAL
(NO ONE IS ILLEGAL)

LIVING AS FORM

1997 -

In German, the article "kein" roughly trans-
lates as none, or the negation of a preceding
noun. "Kein" can also mean to withdraw or reject,
as in a set of ideas. For media artist, filmmaker,
and activist Florian Schneider, the word acts as a
tool, for understanding how national borders are
maintained in the digital era—and for contesting
those borders: as citizenship status is increas-
ingly monitored through databases and other
digital information systems, protests against the
civil rights abuses caused by such immigration
Controls are becoming equally ubiquitous. In re-
sponse to these abuses, Schneider launched Kein
Mensch Ist Illegal, or No One Is Illegal at the art fair
Documenta X in Kassel, Germany. This conference
brought together 30 international anti-racism
groups, artists, and other activists, and marked
the beginning of a loose, "borderless" network in
support of reformed labor conditions for undocu-
mented workers, as well as fair access to health-
care, education, and housing. The network soon
acquired a Virtual presence, with international
chapters organized via email and the Internet, still
an emerging platform at the time.

Kein Mensch Ist Illegal served as the precur-
sor to kein.org, Schneiders ongoing, open source
website that facilitates cross-cultural, -disciplin-
ary, and -geographic collaborations aimed at dis-
mantling boundaries drawn along those same lines.

Above: Electronic maps depict locations of refugee rights advocacy groups
that make up the international No One Is Illegal network (Courtesy Florian
Schneider),

PROJECTS

217

KATERINA SEDA

THERE IS NOTH1NG THERE

2003

One Saturday morning in 2003, the mayor
of a small, Czechoslovakian village, Ponetovice,
broadcast a message to all 350 residents: He
asked them to go shopping—at the same time. For
the rest of the day, the people continued to syn-
chronize their routine according to a schedule
that was posted on the village bulletin board. They
simultaneously opened windows, swept porches,
ate dumplings, met for beers, and finally all retired
to bed at 10 pm. Though the regimen, created by
artist Katerina Sedå, was strict, members of the
community felt liberated by the shared activities,
an experience many Europeans perhaps associ¬
ated—somewhat nostalgically—with their lives be-
fore the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Sedå, who lives and works in Brno, named the
project after a common saying in Czech provinc-
es: "There is nothing there." "They feel that every-
thing important happens in cities or somewhere
beyond our borders," Sedå has said. For one year,
she conducted interviews, distributed surveys,
and observed life in the village, which was once
the site of major military battles in the 19th cen-
tury, but was now largely disconnected from the
socio-political fabric of Europe.

Sedå often asks her projects' participants to
recount personal information that she then re-
presents in order to encourage new reflection
on what their lives can mean. When the artist's
grandmother fell into a deep depression after her
husband's death, refusing to leave herarmchairto
perform even basic, hygienic tasks, Sedå encour-
aged the elderly woman to draw, from memory,
every item sold in the hardware store where she
worked as a bookkeeper for 30 years. The activ-
ity, which yielded hundreds of images, allowed
Sedå's grandmother to engage with the past, in
order to re-enter her life in the present. Similarly,
by performing their minute, daily tasks en masse,
Ponetovice residents were empowered to recon-
sider the larger terms of their citizenship.

Above: Residents of the Czech village Ponetovice participate simultaneously in
everyday actions as part of Sedé's 2003 performance (Courtesy the Essl Collec-
tion, Klosterneuburg/Vienna, Austria and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw).

218

LIVING AS FORM

CHEMIROSADO SEIJO

EL CERRQ

2002

The houses of Naranjito, Located outside of
San Juan, Puerto Rico, follow the contour of the
mountain beneath them, rising and falling along
the ridges. This is the first thing Chemi Rosado
Seijo noticed from the foot of the hillside; not the
boarded windows or trash-lined streets—signs of
a declining economy in what was once a thriving
community founded by coffee-plantation work-
ers. And so, in an effort to draw attention to the
uniquely organic shape of this small town—and
to instill a sense of civic pride among residents
who were increasingly disillusioned with their
economic situation—he began to paint all of
Naranjito's houses green.

During the project, Rosado-Seijo asked
homeowners for permission to paint their hornes
a shade of green of their choosing. Many declined
at first, primarily because the color is associated
with the independistas, a local group that sought
secession from the United States. But gradually,
as the color popped out of the terrain and comple-
mented the hues of the surrounding trees, they
began to agree on condition that he also repaint
other parts of the property such as chimneys,
stoops, and fences in different colors. He enlisted
local youth to help him paint, and held workshops,
conferences and other events that brought posi¬
tive press coverage to a community inundated
daily with reports of the endemic unemployment
and crime that had overtaken the village.

Throughout his practice, Rosado Seijo trans-
forms public perception by presenting new ap-
proachestothe urban experience. In 2005, he was
commissioned by the New York-based organiza-
tion Art in General to explore Manhattan on skate¬
board. He then created a map of the best skate
sites and routes he located during his travels; his

15-foot diagram proposed an alternate transporta-
tion option as well as a new aesthetic understand-
ing of the city. El Cerro was presented at the 2002
Whitney Biennial.

Above: Locals gather in a public park in Naranjuto, previously known for its
heavy crime (Photograph by Edwin Medina, Courtesy Chemi Room).

PROJECTS

219

Clockwise from top: The painted houses in the Puerto Rican village of Naranjuto
now echo the colors of the nearby mountainside. Swatches show the different
shades of green that were used to paint structures. Visitors entering Naranjuto.
(Photographs by Edwin Medina, Courtesy Chemi Room)

220

LIVING AS FORM

MICHIHIRO SHIMABUKU

MEMORY OF FUTURE

1996

Japanese artist Michihiro Shimabukus 1996
installation Memory of Future took place in the
car-oriented, decentralized city of Iwakura, Japan.
Given the citys bustling layout pedestrians are
scarce and communal spaces are often under-
used, even in commercial districts. Shimabuku
filled an empty plaza with a variety of props, in-
cluding a papier måché bird's head, flowers, and
a pineapple—intentionally incongruous objects
meant to provoke passersby to stop, enter the
space, and reflect on their relationship to the city.
In drawing attention to previously ignored public
land, Shimabuku asked Iwakuras citizens to con-
sider new possibilities for activating it.

Shimabuku often tweaks routine experiences
by performing absurdist acts in public passage-
ways. For example, he shaved off an eyebrow in the
London Underground, and then engaged in dis-
cussion with shocked and amused witnesses. He
also carried an octopus down a Tokyo street, and
afterward returned the animal to sea. In each in-
stance, the strange act forced an often-oblivious
public to re-connect with their familiar surround-
ings and participate in new exchanges.

In addition to engaging the public directly by
creating interactive situations, Shimabuku's in-
ventive, playful art practice often involves travel
and transformation. He has made pickles while
traveling by canal from London to Birmingham.
He has also biked acrossspecific regions in Japan
looking for deer where none are known to exist—
and, as with all of his projects, meeting passers¬
by, making friends, and dispersing stories along
the way.

Above, top and bottom; Shimabuku installed a handmade sculpture in an
unused public plaza in Iwakura, Japan (Courtesy Shimabuku). Opposite: Resi-
dents of Iwakura engage with props included in Shimabuku 1 s public installation
(Courtesy Shimabuku).

222

LIVING AS FORM

BUSTER SIMPSON

BELLTOWN, P-PATCH,
COTTAGE PARK, AND
GROWING VINE STREET

1993 -

"Get in early, make no assumptions, and treat
your taxpayer as you would your patron." So says
artist and environmental activist Buster Simpson,
who has been initiating community-based inter-
ventions in the Seattle neighborhood Belltown
since 1993. The area is densely populated; over

the years, Simpsons sculptures have operated as
civic improvements, and functioning Solutions to
urban problems. Simpson's sculptures can often
be seen on the tops of buildings, integrated into
downspouts, temporarily placed on street corners,
protecting trees from cars, and in other locations.

His more extensive projects include P-Patch—a
city-owned but community-run garden—occupy-
ing a spread of land next to Cottage Park, a de¬
velopment of three cottages used as a commu¬
nity center and a space for writers' residencies.
Projects developing the community space in
Belltown address urban sustainability, pollution,
and bio-filtration of urban runoff water.

In the mid-1990s, a diverse group of Belltown
residents organized the Growing Vine Street proj-
ect, turning the Vine Street area into a street park
that cleaps the environment while providing open
space for the neighborhood. Over the years, the
project has developed into a laboratory for green
Solutions designed as temporary prototypes for
sustainable improvements.

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PROJECTS

223

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Opposite; The Beckoning Cistern, part of the Growing Vine Street projeet, is a
water cistern that receives roof runoff from the 81 Vine Street building. (Courte-
sy Buster Simpson). Above; Fabrication of the Belltown Pan, a bell-shaped pan
created and used by the Belltown Café on Groundhog Day to cook a symbolic,
communal dish (Courtesy Buster Simpson and the Seattle Times).

Qockmse from top left; A rooftop garden and seed bank was created using old suitcases from
the Skyway Luggage Manufactunng company. A pedestrian walks aeross the hand-carved
Poem to Be Wbm, located in the First Avenue Urban Arboretum. In Shared Clotheshne, Simp¬
son installed nine clotheslines aeross an alley in the Pike Place Market District of Seattle as a
simple gesture toward reconnecting the gentnfying neighborhood. (Courtesy Buster Simpson)

224

LIVING AS FORM

SLANGUAGE

2002 -

The 1992 riots in Los Angeles left many lots in
the city's center empty, and chain-linked off from
public use. Yet, the chains themselves became
canvases for public expression, when city resi-
dents started hanging signs for their businesses,
and posting messages, on them. Years later, artists
Juan Capistan and Mario Ybarra, Jr., considered
these re-uses, and their history, when they began
making art together, devising actions and music
performances in the lots—"slanguage," as they
coined it. The word, as well as their practice of
collaborating, repurposing, and creating a new vo-
cabulary around the urban environment, inspired
them to launch Slanguage, a shared studio space
and gallery in Wilmington, California, outside of
Los Angeles, that took advantage of the lacunae
that arose in the abandoned region. Since then,
the collective, with Capistan, Ybarra, as well as
artist Karla Diaz at the heim, has become a com¬
munity resource for artists in Southern California
that offers a residency program, workshops for
teenagers, public events, and international exhi-
bitions. The collective's work ranges from local
poetry readings and summer art camps to major
museum exhibitions and commissioned projects.

In line the with organization's origins,
Slanguage members continue to explore the vi-
sual vernacular of street art, as well as its ste-
reotypes, in their practice. For example, last year
Capistan, Ybarra, and Diaz co-curated "Defiant
Chronicles" at the Museum of Latin American Art,
a group show that challenged graffiti as a male-
dominated art form. More recently, Diaz organized
"Laced Souls," an exhibition of artist-designed
athletic shoes produced in collaboration with a
local custom sneaker shop. The first "Slangfest,"
which took place in Long Beach this past summer,
featured break-dancing lessons and recycled art

somt

workshops presented by the group's teen council.
Such endeavors combine Slanguage's mission of
connecting street artists to contemporary art in-
stitutions and the general public to the history of
art in the urban environment.

Bottom row, left to right: As part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial, teenagers were invited
to work on a mural in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with Slanguage co-founders.
As part of their three-month residency at MOCA Los Angeles in 2009, members of
Slanguage presented a performance Utled Dislexicon which included a headdress
workshop, The Slanguage base is located in Wilmington, CA. (Courtesy Slanguage)

7bp row: Slanguage is a Los Angeles-area artist group that hosts exhibitions,
leads art*education workshops, and coordinates events (Courtesy Slanguage),

PROJECTS

225

226

LIVING AS FORM

SUPERFLEX

GUARANÅ POWER

2004

Guaranå is a berry grown in the Amazon that
holds high concentrations of caffeine. In 2000,
the main multinational companies that seil drinks
produced from the berry merged to form a cartel.
This created a monopoly on guaranå seeds, which
drove prices down by 80 percent, jeopardizing
the livelihood of Brazilian farmers who cultivate
it. Beginning in 2004, SUPERFLEX worked with a
farmers' cooperative to counter the local econom-
ic effects of the merger by creating an alternative
product—called Guaranå Power —that would com-
pete with the corporate brands.

The artists and farmers collaborated to de-
velop the drink, determine ways to affordably pro-
duce it, and create marketing campaigns in the
form of commercials featuring the farmers own

narratives about the project. In 2006, the Guaranå
Power soft drink was banned from the 27th Sao
Paulo Biennial by the president of the Biennial's
foundation. In response, SUPERFLEX blacked
out the label, and all references to the project
in the exhibition materials. Since then, the proj¬
ect has also served as a reflection on copyright,
trademark, intellectual property, and free speech.
Guaranå Power has been exhibited in other exhi-
bitions, in various forms, to bring attention to the
Brazilian farmers' struggles and their attempt to
find working Solutions.

SUPERFLEX, founded in 1993 and based in
Copenhagen, create projects that engage eco-
nomic forces, explorations of the democratic
production of materials, and self-organization.
They describe their projects as tools for specta-
tors to actively participate in the development
of experimental models that alter the prevail-
ing model of economic production. For Living as
Form, SUPERFLEX was commissioned to create
a life-sized, detailed, and functional copy of the
JPMorgan Chase executives' restroom inside the
Olympic Restaurant. The installation, open to the
public, provided an essential service and also
asked visitors to contemplate the structures of
power that become imbued in even the most un-
assuming architectural spaces.

Above: Guaranå Power was bottled and sold at a production bar at the 2003
Venice Biennale (Photograph by SUPERFLEX).

Opposite: SUPERFLEX developed the dnnk Guaranå Power with local farmers
in Maués, Brazil to compete with similar corporate products (Photograph by
Jeppe Gudmundsen Holmgreen).

228

LIVING AS FORM

APOLONIJA SUSTERSIC

BONNEVOIE? JUICE BAR

1998

The art fair Manifesta 2 took place in the
Centre de Production et de Création Artistique
(CPCA)—a former fruit and vegetable warehouse
in the Luxembourg neighborhood Bonnevoie
that was converted into an exhibition venue. For
her contribution to the show, the Ljubljana- and
Amsterdam-based artist Apolonija Sustersic built
a juice bar outside of the building in homage to
the history of the space, and to attract attention to
historie architecture's new role as an experimental
art center in the area. Her installation ineluded a
long, black counter covered in fruits, and a seat-
ing area, where visitors could congregate before
entering, or after exiting, the exhibition. By plac-
ing the bar directly in the entryway, Sustersic was
able to draw both art patrons as well as neighbor¬
hood residents into the space—and into a dia-
logue—about its future in Bonnevoie. The projeet
ineluded video doeumentation that recounted the
neighborhoods history.

With formal training as an architect, Sustersic
designs forums for conversation about urban in-
frastrueture, and its effectiveness. For example,
Suggestion for a Day, at the Moderna Museet in
Stockholm, Sweden, offered museum visitors bike
tours of contested architectural sites; an overview
of the urban planning and policy debates those
sites have sparked; and finally, an opportunity to
discuss those issues with experts and municipal
officials. In Video Home Video Exchange at the
Kunstverein Muenster, Germany, she screened
films that address the social funetion of suburban
architecture (think: Ang Lee's lee Storm and David
Lynch's Blue Veivet ). Then she asked viewers to
produce their own videos about hornes and gar¬
dens, and submit them for review, in exchange for
a copy of a screened film.

Tbp to bottom: The Juice Bar was presented as part of Manifesta 2 in Luxem-
borg, and took place inside a former fruit market. In order to entice a local
audience, the Juice Bar was open to the street. (Photographs by Apolonija
Suåteråic)

PROJECTS

229

Tbp to bottom: Still from a video titled How to make your own juice? which was
shown at the exhibition space (Courtesy Apolonija Sustersid). Suåteréid s Juice
Bar acted as an in-between zone for the community to explore the contempo-
rary art exhibition that was taking place inside the building (Photograph by
Roman Mensing).

230

LIVING AS FORM

TAHRIR SQUARE

CAIRO, EGYPT

2011

For one month in January 2011, Cairo,
reverberated as thousands of citizens flooded
Tahrir Square in mass protest of former president
Hosni Mubaraks 30-year-rule, which was marked
by human rights abuses, corruption, economic
depression, and food shortages across the region.
The protests transpired for a mere 18 days, yet the
during that time the energy of the crowd, which

consisted of student coalitions, Islamic women
and labor groups, as well as other historically un-
derrepresented constituents, escalated, due in
part to the sheer number of people in the Square,
as well as the new media-savvy tactics they used.

Since then, the so-called "Arab Spring" has
been celebrated as a political and social media
revolution, with Tweets, YouTube videos, and
Facebook pages garnering as much attention
as the vast on-site demonstrations. While the
actual impact of this technology is still up for
debate, these websites were inarguably an im¬
portant communication tool for protest organiz-

event—the production of poetry, T-shirts, and slo-
gans—was reflective of the new communication
channels. In February, Mubarak lost the support
of his military, the international community, and
the United States, and was forced to step down.

ers, and Egyptian media outlets, who labored to
Egypt, disseminate images of the protests, and the en-
suing crackdown, to the broader public imagina-
tion. Likewise, the active commemoration of the

PROJECTS

231

TALLER POPULAR
DE SERIGRAFIA
(POPULAR SILKSCREEN
WORKSHOP)

2002-2007

Tatter Poputar de Serigrafia, or Poputar
Sitkscreen Workshop, was a collective of artists
and designers that formed during the protests
following Argentina's 2001 economic collapse.
Drawing on Latin America's long history of weav-
ing political activism and graphic arts, the group

used silk-screen printing, a quick, inexpensive
process, to create materials inspired by, and as
instruments for, political events. Tatter Poputar's
members would stand amid mobs of demonstra-
tors pulling ink across screens to print images
on t-shirts, and create posters and leaflets, to
be used on site during protests, and as adver- ;
tisements in train stations and other public
corridors.

In 2004, the group silk-screened tank tops
in collaboration with the sewing workshop La
Juanita, a fair labor project by Movimiento de
Trabajadores Desocupados de La Matanza
(Matanza Neighborhood Unemployed Workers'
Movement). Tatter Poputar' s designs, often mono-
chromatic, iconic images appropriated from
sports marketing and political propaganda, have
been exhibited in international art exhibitions,
including the Brussels Biennial and the 27th Såo
Paulo Biennial.

Opposite: Egyptian protestors focused on political tssues, and demanded the
overthrow of President Mubarak (Photograph by Pedro Ugarte, Courtesy of AFP
and Getty Images). Above: Demonstrations in Tbhrir Square began in January
2011 (Photograph by Mahmud Hams, Courtesy of AFP and Getty Images).

232

LIVING AS FORM

TEMPORARY SERVICES

PRI$ONER$ > INVENTIONS

2001 -

Prisoners' Inventions was a collaboration
between art collective Temporary Services and
Angelo, an incarcerated artist in California, who
illustrated the inventions of fellow prisoners
that were designed to fill needs often repressed
by the restrictive environment of the prison. The
inventions range from homemade sex dolls and
condoms to battery cigarette lighters and contra-
band radios. Angelo created drawings, recreated
inventions, and worked with Temporary Services
to build a life-size replica of his cell that would
give visitors a sense of where the inventions were
designed and produced. His work has been pub-

lished in a book, installed in exhibitions, and rep-
resented in otherongoing iterations of the project.

"If some of what's presented here seems un-
impressive, keep in mind that deprivation is a way
of life in prison," Angelo has written. "Even the
simplest of innovations presents unusual chal-
lenges, not just to make an object but in some in-
stances to create the tools to make it and find the
materials to make it from."

Temporary Services is an art collective i ncluding
Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, and Mare Fischer.
They produce exhibitions, publications, events,
and projeets that explore the social context and the
potential of Creative work as a service provided to
communities. The group started as an experimental
exhibition space in a working class neighborhood
of Chicago and went on to produce projeets includ-
ing Prisoners'Inventions and the nationally-distrib-
uted newspaper Art Work: A National Conversation
AboutArt, Labor, and Economics.

To investigate the intersection of art, labor,
economics, and the produetion of social experi-
ences, Temporary Services invited over forty orga-
nizations and businesses from the Lower East Side
to operate stalls in a section of the historie Essex
Street Market during Living as Form. MARKET re-
turnsthe space to its originalfunction asa market-
place, but one that is free to use, non-competitive,
and particularly diverse in its offerings.

Above: One of artist and prisoner Angelo’s inventions, a battery
cigarette lighter (Courtesy Ttemporary Services).

PROJECTS

233

TOROLAB

SURVIVAL UNITS/
TRANSBORDER TROUSERS

2004-2005

In The Region of the Transborder Trousers
(La region de los pantalones transfronterizos),
Torolab, a Tijuana-based collective of architects,
artists, designers, and musicians, use GPS trans-
mitters to explore daily life in the border cities
Tijuana and San Diego. For five days, the col¬
lective carried GPS transmitters, wore Torolab-
designed garments including a skirt, a vest, two
pairs of pants, and sleeves that could be worn with
t-shirts, each with a hidden pocket for a Mexican
passport. They also kept records of their cars' fuel
consumption. The GPS and fuel data was then fed
into a computer and visualized (using software
reprogrammed by Torolab) as an animated map.
Each tracked Torolab member appeared as a col-
ored dot on an urban grid surrounded by a circle
whose diameter indicated the amount of fuel left
in his or her tank.

Torolab has also produced the Transborder
pant, wide-legged, denim trousers that serve as
part of a Survival Suit for border Crossing. The
pants are designed with a series of flat, interior
pockets to protect important documents from
the trials of a long journey through rough ter-
rain. One pocket is intended specifically to hold
a Mexican passport; another accommodates a
laser-read visa card. However, the pants are not
intended exclusively for use by Mexican immi-
grants. For Americans, who often don't need to
show any form of identification to cross the bor¬
der, the pockets can be used for money, credit
cards and pharmaceuticals purchased cheaply
south of the border.

Torolab was founded by Raul
Osuna in 1995 as a "socially engaged

committed to examining and elevating the qual-
ity of life for residents of Tijuana and the trans¬
border region through a culture of ideologically
advanced design."

MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES

THE BEGINNING
OF MY ARCHIVE

1976-

"The sourball of every revolution: After the
revolution, who's going to pick up the garbage
on Monday morning?" Over forty years ago,
Mierle Laderman Ukeles wrote these lines in her
Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 19691, a treatise
on work, service, home, life, and art that called
upon service workers, of all kinds, to change the
world through routine maintenance and preserva-
tion, rather than commercial development. Eight
years later, Ukeles was appointed the first artist-
in-residence with the New York City Department
of Sanitation, a position she still holds and uses
to explore the social and ecological implica-
tions of waste management. Her work has largely
been exercises in outreach—sometimes literally:
In 1977, Ukeles began interviewing New York
City sanitation workers for her Touch Sanitation
Performance. This multivalenced work included
Handshake and Thanking Ritual, in which the art¬
ist shook hands and personally thanked each of
the citys 8,500 sanitation workers over an elev-
en-month period, and Follow in Your Footsteps,
where Ukeles, working eight- to sixteen-hour
followed sanitation workers on their routes

Cårdenas
workshop shifts,

234

LIVING AS FORM

in every district throughout the city and mirrored
their motions as a street dance. In 1985, she built
FlowCity, a visitor center at the 59 th Street Marine
Transfer Station where the public could view used
and recyclable materials as they moved through
the sanitation system. Most recently, she has
launched plans to reclaim the Fresh Kills Landfill,
a 2,200-acre landfill on Staten Island that houses
the World Trade Center debris that accumulated
after the buildings' destruction.

Ukeles' projects mark her longstanding belief
that "art should impinge on the daily life of every-
one and should be injected into daily prime-time
work-time." The Beginning of my Archive tracks
anothercharacteristic of Ukeles' practice—her de-
tailed correspondence with workers, bureaucrats,
and other stakeholders, as well as her own articu-
lation of her so-called "Maintenance Art."

258 060

7bp and bottom: For Touch Sanitation, Ukeles shook hands with 8,500 NYC
Sanitation workers (Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York).

PROJECTS

235

ULTRA-RED

WAR ON THE PQOR

2007

m poor t

"What is the sound of the war on the poor?"
In 2007, the self-described militant sound collec-
tive Ultra-red asked fifteen international artists
and activists to record a one-minute audio piece
in response to this question, which they compiled
for the first volume of an ongoing series. The re-
sults ranged from field recordings, re-appropriat-
ed sounds, mini-symphonies, and spoken rants—
both literal and abstract. For example, a reading
of words taken from prisoners' intake cards at a
Philadelphia penitentiary; sounds captured when
squatters took over the offices of a fru it and veg-
etable factory; a silent hiss.

Ultra-red was founded by two AIDS activists,
Marco Larsen and Dont Rhine, who first collabo-
rated to counter police harassment during Los
Angeles' inaugural syringe exchange program.
Realizing that video documentation would deter
users from participating in the exchange, Larsen
and Rhine began recording sounds as a way of
monitoring law enforcement, a practice the blos-
somed into a series of installations and perfor-
mances. Since then, Ultra-red has expanded
into an international group that explores acous-
tic space, social relations, and political struggle
though so-called "Militant Sound Investigations,"
as well as radio broadcasts, texts, and actions in
public space.

Above and right: Sound interventions produced by Ultra-red
included artists 1 responses to the question. "What is the sound of
the war on the poor?" (Courtesy Ultra-red).

236

LIVING AS FORM

URBAN BUSH WOMEN

SUMMER LEADERSHIP
INSTITUTE

UNITED INDIAN
HEALTH SERVICES

POTAWOT HEALTH
VILLAGE

1994-

"Good health goes beyond the individual. It
must include the health of the entire community
including its culture, language, art and traditions,
as well as the environment in which it exists."
These are the words of Jerry Simone, chief execu¬
tive officer of United Indian Health Services, a
50-year-old healthcare organization that empha-
sizes the role of art, and sustainable practices,
alongside allopathic medicine in its facilities. In
1994, the UIHS broke ground for Potawot Health
Village in northern California, now a 40-acre farm
with an outpatient medical clinic, community food
garden, orchard, childrens camp, and a wildlife
reserve.

The wildlife reserve, called Ku'wah-dah-wilth
("Comes back to life" in the native Wiyot lan¬
guage), spans twenty acres of restored wetlands
devoted to preservation of natural habitats, parks,
and traditionalagriculturaland spiritual programs.
Produce from the garden is distributed through a
bi-weekly produce stand or a subscription mem-
ber service between June and December. Another
two acres are dedicated for growing medicinal
herbs. And an additional one-acre garden, the Ish-
took Basket and Textile Demonstration Garden,
provides a workspace for traditional basketry as
well as information on the negative effects of pes-
ticides and Chemicals on weavers and gatherers
of fibrous plants.

The Summer Leadership Institute is the femi¬
nist dance troupe Urban Bush Womens ten-day
intensive training program that melds the per-
forming arts with community activism in move-
ment classes, workshops, field trips, community
renewal events, and the development of new cho-
reographies. Each day begins with a dance class
followed by discussions groups on topics such as
"undoing racism," and understanding cultural dif-
ference through storytelling. The Institute, which
began in Tallahassee, now takes place in New
Orleans to mobilize city performers in the ongo-
ing recovery of Hurricane Katrina.

Choreographer and founding artistic director
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar formed the seven-woman
ensemble in 1984 to develop a "woman-centric
perspective" on social justice issues. The troupe
takes inspiration from both contemporary dance
practice and traditions from the African Diaspora;
often, Urban Bush Women performances consist
of bold, powerful movements and intimate, nar-
rative gestures—a vocabulary that offers alter-
nate notions of femininity, politics, and personal
history. The troupe has also collaborated with
numerous artists working in a range disciplines
from jazz musicians, poets, and visual artists.

This year, the troupe produced "Resistance
and Power," a series of works that typify the ap-
proach of Urban Bush Women to exploring history:
Though the choreography is rarely literal, the mes-
sages—stories that take on issues surrounding
race, inequity, and the process of empowerment—
are clear. "The arts are very powerful in address-
ing social change, and it's not where people often
look first," Zollar has said. "But the arts connect
people not to how they think about social issues,
but to how they feel about them. Once you're clear
about how you feel, then action becomes more of
a possibility."

PROJECTS

237

U$ SOCIAL FORUM

2007-

The U.S. Social Forum gathers tens of thou-
sands of activists over several days with the goal
of building a unified, national social justice move-
ment across the country. Since its inception, two
forums have taken place, in Atlanta in 2007 and
in Detroit in 2010. Each forum drew over 15,000
activists, and offered a multitude of programs,
including workshops, arts and culture perfor-
mances, activities for children and youth, direct
actions, tours, and fundraising initiatives. The
event has attracted organizers—a younger, ethni-
cally diverse crowd from a range of fields—inter-
ested in developing new "Solutions to economic
and ecological crises."

Inspired by the World Social Forum—which,
starting in 2001 brought together international
activists fighting against neoliberal globaliza-
tion—the U.S. Social Forum began to take shape in
2005. The planning committee was formed by the
group Grassroots Global Justice and was com-
prised of over forty-five organizations, including
Amnesty International USA, the AFL-CIO, and the
U.S. Human Rights NetWork. Despite the breadth
of the event, and vast attendance, the USSF,
has received little press coverage in the main-
stream media.

Detroit was a particularly apt host city for
the USSF because of its persistently declin-
ing economy, lack of jobs, and other inequitable
conditions that have come into central focus in
recent years. The tagline for the event, "Another
U.S. Is Necessary," marks the spirit of the USSF,
and the desire to overhaul economic systems and
government practices—also reflected in the recent
"Occupy Wall Street" movement, as well as other
protests cropping up in municipal plazas across
the globe. Over 1,000 USSF workshops took
place, which veered away from standard meeting
formats toward more collaborative efforts.

Above: Urban Bush Women perform "Scales of Memory at the
Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2008
(Courtesy Urban Bush Women).

238 LIVING AS FORM

BIKVANDERPOL

ABSOLUT STOCKHOLM:
LABELOR LIFE, CITY
ON A PLATFORM?
2000-2001

Imaging walking into a museum gallery and
seeing your favorite P0ANG chair from IKEA.
Your BJURSTA table is there as well, and bal-
anced on top of it is your AR0D lamp. It's an en-
tire room composed of IKEA products, laid out
as it might be in your own home. But theres one
critical distinction: the whole familiar living room
set up is affixed directly to the museum wall. In
2001, Rotterdam-based Bik van der Pol—the col-
laborative practice of Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van
der Pol—created a three dimensional, life-size
billboard at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm,

Sweden. Mounting actual pieces of IKEA furni-
ture within the outline of Absolut's iconic bottle
shape, Absolute Stockholm constituted a cheeky
mash-up of two global Swedish corporations.

Using the billboard as a springboard, Bik Van
der Pol explored relations between ideas, ideals,
propaganda, and personal investment in the past.
To build on the themes of the project, the pair se-
lected a number of public spaces in Stockholm
that had played a significant role in Swedens past
and the development of the "Swedish model."
These spaces were then host to public meetings,
small events, and interventions intended to foster
connections between residents and visitors. In
particular, participants were asked to interrogate
the idea of "publicness," and the meaning of pub¬
lic space in a city where public places often disap-
pear in favor of pragmatic capitalist developments.

Since Bik and Van der Pol began working
together in 1995, their installations, videos, and
drawings have interrogated physical, and cul-
tural, time and space. For example, in 2007, they
designed a screening format and guidebook for
the Istanbul Biennales Nightcomers video pro¬
gram throughout the city that broadened public
access to the "high culture" event, as opposed to
the traditional design of an exclusive screening
structure.

Above: Absolut Stockholm took place all over the city of Stockholm and is a
search for the life 'behind the labels’ (Photograph by JN van der Pol).

PROJECTS

239

Above, top to bottom: Absolut Stockholm took place all over the city of
Stockholm and is a search for the life 'behind the labels 1 . Absolut Stockholm
combined a New York Absolut Vodka billboard with IKEA furniture. (Photo-
graphs by Jos van der Pol)

240

LIVING AS FORM

Above: Bik van der Pol mslalled Absolut Stockholm, a life-sized reproduction
of a New York ad for Absolut Vodka, at the Modema Museet in Stockholm
(Photograph by JN van der Pol).

PROJECTS 241

WENDEUEN VAN
OLDENBORGH

MAURITS SCRIPT

2006

The renowned art institution the Mauritshuis,
in The Hague, was once home to Johann Maurits
van Nassau, the former governor of colonial North
East Brazil (1637-44), who was considered to have
exercised a more enlightened, tolerant rule than
many other colonial governors. Forthethird part of

Dutch artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh's ongoing
collaborative project, A Certain Brazilianness, she
invited people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, in-
cluding second- and third-generation immigrants
from the former colonies, to the Mauritshuis to
read a scripted multiple-voice dialogue compiled
from official and unofficial historical accounts of
Maurits' governorship. Two participants read each
character, while others, including audience mem-
bers, engaged in discussion about the historical
issues raised by the script relative to contempo-
rary culture. The live, staged event was recorded
as a 67-minute film, called Maurits Script.

Rotterdam-based van Oldenborgh employs
diverse voices in her investigation of the public
sphere. She often uses the format of an open film
shoot, collaborating with participants in different
scenarios, to co-produce a script and orient the
work towards its final outcome, which can be film
or other forms of projection.

Above: A performer recites from van 01denborgh‘s scnpt at Johan Maurits van
Nassau’s residence in The Hague (Photograph by Wendelien van Oldenborgh,
Courtesy Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam).

242

LIVING AS FORM

EDUARDO VAZQUEZ
MARTIN

FARO DE ORIENTE

2000 -

FARO de Oriente, or East Lighthouse, is a
government-funded cultural center, and arts and
crafts school in Mexico City intended to serve
areas of the city that lack access to cultural Ser¬
vices. Founded by poet and educator Eduardo
Våzquez Martin, the space is located in the city's
Iztapalapa borough, one of most densely populat-
ed and underprivileged communities in Mexico.
All classes and workshops offered at FARO are
free, and range from theater and music to jump
rope and fabric printing.

In 2000, architect Alberto Kalach discovered
a 24,500 square meter abandoned building, and
divided the space into galleries, workshops, a li-
brary, an outdoor forum, gardens, and parkland.
Designed as both cultural resource and civic out-
reach, the school serves as a forum for community
meetings, and a social service information hub.
FARO, which also hosts a pirate radio and televi-
sion station as well as a print magazine, was the
first such community center to open in the city;
three more have been erected since then. The
three-building space also houses a library, com¬
puter lab, gym, childcare facility, welding room,
and carpentry workshop.

Conceived as a cultural center and space for
artistic production, FARO follows a pedagogical
model that emphasizes dialogue and seeks to cre-
ate a space for diverse expression. Through these
Services, the center fosters community develop¬
ment as well as the improved use of urban spaces
and city infrastructure for culture and art.

Eduardo Vazquez Martin was born in Mexico
City in 1962. He has been involved in a number
of Mexico City's cultural projects and publications,
and is currently the Director of the city's Museum of
I Natural History and Environmental Cultura (Museo
de Historia Natural y de Cultura Ambiental).

VOINA

2007-

For the past year, the irreverent Russian art
collective Voina has been laying low, on the run
from the police thanks to their incendiary street
actions that have ranged from absurdist pranks
that suggest institutional critique—throwing live
catsat McDonaldscashiers—to illegal, overtly po-
liticized acts—flipping over parked police cars. In
2008, on the eve of Dmitri Medvedevs election,
Voina staged perhaps their most notorious perfor¬
mance, Fuck for the heir Puppy Bear!, a three-part
action carried out over the course of two days for
which five couples, including a pregnant woman,
had public sex in Moscow's Timirayzev State
Museum of Biology.

Two years later, on the anniversary of Che
Guevaras birthday, members of the group painted
a 65-meter-tall, 27-meter-wide phallus on a draw-
bridge in an action outside the Federal Security
Service in Saint Petersburg. Two of the groups
members, Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev,
have been arrested for "hooliganism motivated by
hatred or hostility toward a social group." Though
they have been released on bail, they artists face
up to seven years in prison. Since its inception,
membership in the collective has expanded,
somewhat vi rally, to more than 200 participants.

Though the collectives actions often read like
high-concept pranks, they're motivated by a seri-
ous desire to call out corruption and complacency
in modern-day Russia. Speaking to the New York
Times in January, 2011, about the drawbridge ac¬
tion, Voina member Alexey Pluster-Sarno said, "It
is monumental, heroic, romantic, left-radical, an
act of protest. I like it as a piece of work, not just
because it is a penis."

PROJECTS

Tbp to bottom: Voina's action Dick captured by KGB was performed on June 14,
2010. In less than a minute, members of the group painted a 65-meter-tall, 27-me-
ter-wide phallus on a drawbndge outside the Federal Secunty Service in Samt
Petersburg. (Courtesy Voina, in partnership with the Brooklyn House of Knlture)

244

MARION VON OSTEN

MONEYNATIONS

LIVING AS FORM

1998, 2000

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, new na¬
tions emerged. So did border policies that limited
migration from Central and Southeastern Europe
into the West, and labor practices that exploited
workers and propagated new cultural stereotypes.
MoneyNations—a network of artists, theorists,
and media activists—formed in 1998 to create
public discussion around the racist and discrimi-
natory practices that developed across Europe
in the decade after Communism fell. The group,
which convened twice within a two-year period,
also questioned outdated assumptions about dif-
ference, the "center," and the "margin," as well as
left-wing criticism that often affirmed these ideas.
"Even anti-racist campaigns tend to depict mi-
grants as victims who have been criminalized for
the purpose of achieving certain political goals,"
wrote artist and key organizer Marion von Osten in
"Euroland and the Economy of the Borderline," an
essay she published in 2000 describing the polit¬
ical climate that prompted MoneyNations to form.
She creates collaborative forums—exhibitions, in-
dependently published books, and films—to chal-
lenge capitalism, sometimes by using capitalist
practices to do so.

MoneyNations launched by inviting cultural
producers from contested regions to develop
communication platforms that didn't simply in-
clude "non-Western voices" within Western in-
stitutions, but allowed those voices to lead the
conversation. Their three-day event and media
workshop at Zurich's Shedhalle in 1998 yielded
a webzine, video exchange, photographs, instal-
lations, and a print publication. Alternatives to
top-down panel discussions, which often limit
discourse to Scripts, and stunt audience partici-
pation. In this arena, participants focused on the
new collective and individual identities formed in
post-1989 Europe by considering cultural produc-

tion and activism initiated by artists, over official
legislative or economic policies.

The second MoneyNations event occurred in
2000 at Viennas Kunsthalle Exnergasse.Thistime,
participants aimed to challenge existing power
structures in Europe by experimenting with so-
called grassroots broadcast media. The network
launched mnFM, an on-air and online audio data¬
base and exchange platform, and MoneyNations
TV, an open video-exchange between middle,
central, and southeastern European producers.

Above: MoneyNations arranged collaborative forums (top), exhibitions, and
events (middle) and invited cultural producers to launch communication plat¬
forms for non-Western voices (bottom). (Courtesy Marion von Osten)

PROJECTS

245

Tbp to bottom. MoneyNations was orgamzed by Marion von Osten
to discuss the discrimination that developed across Europe after
the fall of Communism. Exhibitions and events took place in Ziirich
and Vienna. (Courtesy Manon von Osten)

246

LIVING AS FORM

PETER WATKINS

LA COMMUNE
(PARIS, 1871)

1999

La Commune (Paris, 1871) is a 375-min-
ute docudrama reconstructing the events of
the Paris Commune in its 1871 struggle against
the Versaillais French forces. The filming took
place in an abandoned factory on the outskirts
of Paris that was outfitted to resemble the llth
Arrondissement, one of the poorest working-
class districts at the time of the Commune's sup-
pression, and the scene of some of the conflict's
bloodiest fighting.

The east ineluded 220 people from Paris and
the provinces, most of them lacking prior acting
experience. People with conservative political
views were deliberately recruited to act in roles
opposed to the Commune. The east members were
encouraged to do their own research into the his-
torical events, as well as to improvise and to dis-
cuss the events during the filming process. Even
after the shooting was over, the cast's involvement
with its ideas continued in different ways; for ex-
ample, a weekend of public talks organized by one
of the actors, featuring presentations and debates
on the Paris Commune.

English director Peter Watkins has been ex-
perimenting with the "newsreel style" seen in
La Commune since the 1950s. He is particularly
interested in the play between reality and artifi-
ciality that the medium of doeumentary film calls
up—the "high-key" Hollywood lighting tempered
by the emotions and faces of real people. Earlier
films like The Forgotten Faces (1960), a recreation
of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and The War

Game (1965), for which Watkins used a Vietnam-
era newsreel style to capture scenes from an
18 th -century battle, point to the critique of mod-
ern media and community involvement evident in
La Commune.

WKILEAKS

2007-

In April 2010, a shocking video of an American
helicopter firing upon a group of Iraqi journalists
on the ground in Bagdad stunned mainstream
media and the diplomatic world, and inspired a
global debate about the relationship between
news outlets and the governments they report on.
The video, titled Collaterai Murder, was released
by WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing non-profit orga-
nization that, since its inception, has aimed to
shine light on the operations of governments and
corporations around the world. Founded by for¬
mer computer hacker Julian Assange, as well as a
group of technologists, dissidents, and activists,
WikiLeaks is guided by the premise that demoera-
cy works best when citizens are aware of state and
military operations, and can hold governments ac-
countable to their actions.

Historically, large media groups consult with
government sources before releasing potentially
sensitive information, in order to leverage these
relationships for greater access to information.
WikiLeaks has challenged this process by es-
chewing such negotiations and releasing clas-
sified memos, diplomatic cables, videos, and
other materials directly to the public via its web-
site. "Publishing improves transparency, and this
transparency creates a better society for all peo¬
ple,'' states WikiLeaks' mission. "Better scrutiny

Opposite: Wikstrom repeated her original performance in 2009 at the ICA Maxi
supermarket m Kalmar, Sweden (Photograph by Oscar Guermouche).

PROJECTS

leads to reduced corruption and stronger democ-
racies in all society's institutions, including gov¬
ernment, corporations and other organizations. A
healthy, vibrant, and inquisitive journalistic media
plays a vital role in achieving these goals. We are
part of that media." WikiLeaks' critics, with the
U.S. government at the heim, have countered that
the organizations practices have endangered mil-
itary and intelligence personnel as well as their
civilian sources.

WikiLeaks operates with a small, all-volunteer
staff as well as a network of 800 to 1,000 experts
who advise on issues such as encryption, vet-
ting information, and programming. Its material
is housed on servers around the globe, outside
of the jurisdiction of any single institution or
government.

247

ELIN WIKSTROM

WHAT WOUILD HAPPEN
IF EVERYBODY DID THIS?

1993

For her contribution to a group exhibition in
Malmo, Sweden, Elin Wikstrom moved a bed into
a grocery store, and lay silently under the covers
every day, from morning until close, during the
three-week run of the show. She installed an elec-
tronic display sign overhead that read, "One day, I
woke up feeling sleepy, sluggish, and sour. I drew
the bedcovers over my head because I didn't want
to get up, look around or talk to anyone. Under the
covers I said to myself, l'll lie like this, completely
still, without saying a word, as long as I want. I'm

248

LIVING AS FORM

Åbove; Wikstrom lay on a bed in the middle of the store in Kalmar during busi¬
ness hours for seven days (Photograph by Oscar Guermouche).

PROJECTS

249

not going to do anything, just close my eyes, and
let the thoughts come and go. Now, what would
happen if everyone did this?"

Wikstroms presence drew mixed reactions
from shoppers, as well as a range of discussions
in the store—a place where otherwise nothing un-
predictable happens, according to the artist. An el-
derly woman stood by the bed daily, and read pas-
sages from the Bible, while a young man pulled up
a stool and read his poems to her. Another pinched
Wikstroms toe. "What is this? A real person or a
mannequin?" he asked. "It's a work of art," his com-
panion responded.

Within the art world, the acronym ICA gener-
ally refers to "Institute of Contemporary Art." In
Sweden, the letters also represent the name of
one of the largest supermarket chains. By host¬
ing the exhibition in a grocery store, local artists
were granted a new venue amid the closing of
many of the citys exhibition spaces. Meanwhile,
the show also brought performative works, such as
Wikstrom's piece, to a wider public.

WOCHENKLAUSUR

MEDICAL CARE FOR
THE HOMELESS

1993-

Austrians are insured under their countrys
universal health coverage. Yet, the homeless
often go without treatment due to a highly bu-
reaucratic system that favors those with proof
of residency. When the Vienna-based collective
WochenKlausur was invited to present work at the
contemporary art space Vienna Succession, they
organized a free mobile clinic in the Karlsplatz,
a plaza near the gallery generally populated by
many homeless people. The clinic, which was run
out of a van and equipped to facilitate basic medi-
cal treatment, was initially designed as a proto¬
type intended to operate for 11 weeks. This was

Above: The clmic's ven, now run by Caritas, travels to public spaces around
Vienna and provides health care for homeless people (Courtesy WochenKlausur).

250

LIVING AS FORM

7bp; The Women on Waves ship Aurora prepares to sail to Ireland
(Courtesy Women on Waves). Åbove: The first Latin American abor
tion hotline was officially launched in 2008 in Ecuador when a banner
was hung on the Virgen del Panecillo in Quito (Photograph by Mrova,
Courtesy Women on Waves).

1993. The van still travels daily to public spaces
throughout Vienna, providing medical care to over
600 people per month.

The collective—a group of eight artists—raised
70,000 Euros from commercial sponsors in order
to purchasethevan, medical equipment, supplies,
and licensing required to operate the facility on
public property. However, paying physicians' sala-
ries proved to be a larger obstacle, since the only
viable funding source—the city government—re-
fused to participate. But after WochenKlausur
enlisted a German reporter to interview Vienna's
chancellor, the city acquiesced to the request,
and continues to support two full-time positions.

Medical Care for the Homeless was the first of
nearly 30 endeavors WochenKlausur has launched
in the past 17 years, each designed to create im-
mediate impact on a pressing local issue. The col¬
lective travels to different cities upon invitation by
arts institutions, reads local papers, talks to resi-
dents, and then identifies precise actions that can
be carried out within a given timeframe, in order
to institute sustainable change. The projects have
ranged from establishing a pension for sex work-
ers in Zurich to recycling materials from museums
into objects useful to homeless shelters, soup
kitchens, and clothing distribution centers.

WOMEN ON WAVES

2001 -

Women on Waves rocked the boat well before
setting sail in 2001. Lead by physician Rebecca
Gomperts,thiswomen'shealthcareadvocacy group
aimed to provide abortion Services in countries
where the procedure is illegal. They built a seafar-
ing abortion clinic registered in The Netherlands,

PROJECTS

251

anchored it 12 miles away from harbors in inter¬
national waters, where they could operate under
Dutch law, and attempted to safely bring women
on board. Yet, media buzz resulted in strong resis-
tance including military intervention as the ship
approached Portugal and pelts from fake blood
and eggs in Poland. No surgical abortions were
performed at sea, and only fifty women received
abortions of any kind on the vessel. "But the boat
created a lot of controversy, which has always been
important to the campaign," says Kinja Manders,
project manager for Women on Waves. "Our goal
has always been to stir public debate, and to send
the message that abortion is not simply a public
health issue—it's a social justice issue."

The small team, a mix of healthcare special-
ists and activists, provided contraceptives, preg-
nancy testing, information about STDs, and pre-
scribed the abortion pill (RU-486) aboard until
2008. While the sea voyages have ended, Women
on Waves has exhibited the boat in international
exhibitions, in homage to the organization's roots
in the arts: early funding was provided by the
Mondriaan Foundation, and Gomperts earned a
degree in art before attending med school. "We've
always been interested in the link between activ-
ism and art," Manders says, "and in finding Cre¬
ative and conceptual Solutions that are on the
edge." The organization now exists online and
educates women on safe, self-induced abortions, a
medically uncontroversial, but politically charged
practice; how to obtain abortion pills; and where to
seek accurate information and counseling before
and after an abortion.

Above. The Portuguese Navy blocks the Women on Waves ship from enter-
mg Portugal (Photograph by Nadya Peek, Courtesy Women on Waves).

252

LI ING AS FORM

THE LEONORE ANNENBERG PRIZE FOR AR1 AND SOCIAL CHANGE

253

sti

Starting in 2008, Creative
bestowing The Leonore Aifi
Social Change to three di
committed their lifes work
in surprising and profound
presented annually at the
has been generously su
Foundation.

The prize is directly in li
Mrs. Annenbergs generous
tarian efforts, and devotio
award also furthers Creati
to commissioning and pres
torically important artwork
experimentation and chang

Time has had the honor of
nenberg Prize for Art and
nguished artists who have
to promoting social justice
ways. The $25,000 prize is
Creative Time Summit and
pported by the Annenberg

with the achievements of
spirit, passion for humani-
n to the public good. The
|e Times long commitment
^nting groundbreaking, his-
and fostering a culture of
e.

THEYESMEN

2003 -

Founded by self-described "impostors" Andy
Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, The Yes Men work
to raise awareness around pressing social issues,
specifically targeting "leaders and big corpora-
tions who put profits ahead of everything else."
Known for their public pranks and parodies, the
duo agree their way into the fortified compounds
of commerce and politics and share their stories
to provide the public with a glimpse at the inner
workings of corporate and political America. An
early project took the form of a satirical website,
www.gwbush.com, which drew attention to alleged
hypocrisies and false information on President
G. W. Bush's actual site. On Decem ber 3, 2004,
the twentieth anniversary of Bhopal disaster in
India, Bichlbaum posed as a spokesperson from
Dow Chemical—the company responsible for the
chemical disaster—for an interview with the BBC.
Announcing on live television that the company
intended to liquidate $12 billion in assets to as-
sist victims of the Bhopal incident, Bichlbaum

started an international rumor resulting in a loss
of $2 billion for Dow.

In their most notorious prank to date. The
Yes Men, the 2009 recipients of The Leonore
Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, de-
signed and distributed fake editions of three
world newspapers. On November 12, 2008, they
distributed a fake edition of The New York Times in
NYC and LA. The lead headline proclaimed, "Iraq
War Ends." Their fake edition of The International
HeraldTribune, on which Greenpeace collaborated
and which was distributed in Brussels, NYC, and
Beijing, coincided with an international climate
change summit in Brussels. It declared, "Heads
of State Agree on Historie Climate-Saving Deal."
When the summit failed to produce a solid agree-
ment, The Yes Men updated the Online edition to
read, "World Actually Not Saved." On September
21, 2009, a bogus New York Post distributed in
New York City read "We're Screwed," again com-
menting on worldwide climate change.

Over the years the group has also launched
some very unconventional produets—from the
Dow Acceptable Risk calculator, a new industry
standard for determining how many deaths are ac¬
ceptable when achieving large profits, to Vivoleum,
a new renewable fuel sourced from the victims of
climate change. The gonzo political activists have
produced two doeumentary films. The Yes Men
(2003) and The Yes Men Fix the World (2009),
which was awarded the prestigious audience
award at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Opposite: A New Yorker takes m the shocking news from the Yes Men s faux
New York Times cover (Courtesy Steve Lambert).

Above, top to bottom; The mfiatable costume SurvivaBall claims to be a self
contained living system for corporate managers for suiviving disasters caused
by global warming. The Yes Men pose as corporate executives. (Courtesy
Steve Lambert)

JHALUBUF; TON

RICK LOWE

PROJEa ROW HQUSES

1993 -

In 1993, artist Rick Lowe purchased a row
of abandoned shotgun-style houses in Houston,
Texas', Northern Third Ward district, a low-income
African-American neighborhood that was slot-
ted for demolition. He galvanized hundreds of
volunteersto help preserve the buildings, first by
sweeping streets, rebuilding facades, and reno-
vating the old housings interiors.Then, with fund-
ing from the National Endowment for the Arts and
private foundations, the growing group of activ-
ists transformed the blight-ridden strip into a vi-
brant campus that hosts visiting artists, galleries,
a park, commercial spaces, gardens, and as well
as subsidized housing for young mothers, ages
18-26, looking to get back on their feet. Called
Project Row Houses, the effort has restored the
architecture and history of the community, while

providing essential social Services to residents.
Now functioning as a non-profit organization, the
project continues to be emblematic of long-term,
community-engaged programs, and has been ex-
hibited around in world in museums, and otherart
venues.

Since Project Row Houses' inception, Lowe—
the 2010 recipient of The Leonore Annenberg
Prize for Art and Social Change—has privileged
art as a catalyst for change, a word that he has
considered carefully. "It used to be that you could
assume a progressive agenda when you heard the
word 'change,'" he says. "But language is shifting.
Clarify is missing." The project first took root after
a conversation he had with a high school student
who questioned the efficacy of making art ob-
jects in the quest for social justice. Inspired, Lowe
looked to the work of artist John Biggers, who
believed that art holds the capacity to uplift tan-
gible social conditions, before intervening in the
Northern Third Ward.

Project Row Houses has grown from 22 hous¬
es to 40, and includes exhibition spaces, a liter-
ary center, a multimedia performance art space,
offices, low-income housing, and other amenities.
In 2003, the organization established the Row
House Community Development Corporation, a
low-income rental-housing agency.

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JEANNE VAN HEESWJK

1993 -

"If you really want to contribute to changes
in social structures, you need time." Jeanne van
Heeswijk took this ethos to heart in Valley Vibes,
her effort to gather the voices of East Londons
residents, who in 1998 began witnessing gentrifi-
cation—or the replacement of local culture for cor-
porate business—in their neighborhood. As part of
the project, van Heeswijk built a "Vibe Detector,"
a simple aluminum storage container on wheels
that functions as a mobile karaoke machine, radio
station, and recording studio, equipped with a
professional sound kit and DAT recorder.

At the projects launch, van Heeswijk enlisted

traveled to private parties, the local hairdressers
salon, shops, nightclubs, poetry readings, school
events, municipal meetings, and festivals—wher-
ever residents would gather to discuss issues
important to them. CHORA still operates the Vibe
Detector by offering the equipment for use free of
charge, as well as technical assistance and mar¬
keting ad vice.

Van Heeswijk is the 2011 recipient of The
Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social
Change. Since 1993, she has created public art
that mediates relationships among neighborhood
residents by initiating different modes of com-
munication around pressing issues. For one of
her first projects, she organized a joint exhibition
between Amsterdams Buers van Berlage art mu¬
seum and the Red Cross that addressed notions
of human dignity in an age of violence. In 2008,
she revitalized the Afrikaander market in South
Rotterdam by bringing artists, vendors, and con-
sumers together to rebuild stalls, rethink the se-
lection of wares for sale, and create a new econo-
my within this struggling neighborhood.

members of the architecture and urban-planning

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Above: Van Heeswijk created Norway's first hospital soap opera with It Runs in
the Neighbourhood at the Stavanger University Hospital in 2008, when Stavan¬
ger was the European .Capital of Culture (Photograph by Jeanne van Heeswijk).

research group CHORA to occupy sidewalks (å
la street food vendors) and ask residents to use
the available equipment to record their stories,
music, performances, or any other signifier of
local culture that countered the regeneration tak-
ing place in the neighborhood. The Vibe Detector

Above: Valley Vibes took place m parts of East London designated for regen¬
eration, like this section near Deptford (Courtesy of Jeanne van Heeswijk and
Amy Plant).

DIT IS EEN

FREEHOUSE

TESTMOMENT.

OUT UJ

Met dit pakket is het bouwen voor elkaar.

Bottom: Van Heeswijk, with architect Dennis Kaspori, offered children a collective
learning environment with the project Fhce Your World, Urban Lab Slotervaart in
Amsterdam in 2005 (Photograph by Dennis Kaspori).

Tbp row, loft to nght: The Blue House, one of the bmldings m a planned develop¬
ment in Amsterdam, was turned into a place for research into the history, develop¬
ment, and evolution of expenmental communihes. Tbmorrows Market is a project
based on cultural production as a means of econormc growth for the redeveloptng
Afhkaanderwijk neighborhood of Rotterdam. (Photographs by Ramon Mosterd)

J t —

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jjrir

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991—2011
was generously made possible by:

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

PROJECTSUPPORTERS

Uving as Form was made possible by:

The Lily Auchincloss Foundation
Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo
The Danish Arts Council Committee for Visual Arts
Stephanie & Tim Ingrassia
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Bella Meyer & Martin Kace
The Mondriaan Foundation
The National Endowment for the Arts
The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts,
Design and Architecture
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Emily Glasser & Billy Susman

ART WORKS.

arts.gov

Living as Form (the Abridged, Nomadic Version) is curated by Nato
Thompson and co-organized by Creative Time and Independent
Curators International (ICI), New York.

CREDITS

Living os Form: Sociolly EngagedArt from 1991-2011:

Nato Thompson, Editor

Sharmila Venkatasubban, Managing Editor

Garrick Gott, Designer

Clinton Krute, Copyeditor

Ann Holcomb, Proofreader

Cynthia Pringle, Proofreader

Sadia Shirazi, Fact Checker

Merrell Hambleton, Editorial Assistant

Phillip Griffith, intern

Madeline Lieberburg, Intern

Rachel Ichniowski, Intern

Winona Packer, Intern

Curatorial Advisors:

Caron Atlas, Negar Azimi, Ron Bechet, Claire Bishop, Brett
Bloom, Rashida Bumbray, Carolina Caycedo, Ana Paula Cohen,
Common Room, Teddy Cruz, Sofia Hernåndez, Chong Cuy,
Gridthiya Gaweewong, Hou Hanru, Stephen Hobbs, Marcus
Neustetter, Shannon Jackson, Maria Lind, Chus Martinez,

Sina Najafi, Marion von Osten, Ted Purves, Raqs Media
Collective, Gregory Sholette, SUPERFLEX, Christine Tohme,
and Sue Bell Yank

Creative Time Board of Directors:

Amanda Weil (Board Chair), Philip E. Aarons, Steven Alden,
Peggy Jacobs Bader, Jill Brienza, Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo,
Suzanne Cochran, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Marie Douglas, Dana
Farouki, Thelma Golden, Michael Gruenglas, Sharon Hayes,

Tom Healy, Stephanie Ingrassia, Liz Kabler, Stephen Kramarsky,
Patrick Li, Bella Meyer, Vik Muniz, Shirin Neshat, Amy Phelan,
Paul Ramirez Jonas, William Susman, Elizabeth Swig, Felicia
Taylor, Jed Walentas

Creative Time Staff:

Anne Pasternak, President and Artistic Director

Jay Buim, Leonhardt Cassullo Video Fellow
Merrell Hambleton, Development Associate
Katie Hollander, Deputy Director
Marisa Mazria Katz, Artists on the News Editor
Christopher Kissock, Digital Marketing and
Communications Associate
Zoe Larkins, Executive Assistant
Cynthia Pringle, Director of Operations
Lydia Ross, Foundation and individual Giving Associate
Danielle Schmidt, Associate Director of Events
and Membership
Justin Sloane, Designer

Jessica Shaefer, Interim Director of Communications
Kevin Stanton, Production Assistant
LeilaTamari, Programming Assistant
Nato Thompson, Chief Curator
Sharmila Venkatasubban, Curatorial/Editorial Fellow

Additional thanks to former Creative Time staff who were
involved with the project:

Leah Abir, Artis Curatorial Fellow

Aliya Bonar

Shane Brennan

Anna Dinces

Rachel Ford

Dina Pugh

Sally Szwed

COLOPHON

Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art From 1991-2011

Participation And Spectacle: Whére Are We Now?

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including
photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval)
without permission in writing from the publisher.

Design assistant: Maggie Bryan

Typefaces: Geometric 213 and 712 by Bitstream

and Mercury by Radim Pesko

Printed and bound in Hong Kong by Paramount

Production supervision: The Production Department,

Sue Medlicott and Nerissa Dominguez Vaies

Co-published by:

Creative Time Books
59 East 4th Street, 6th floor
New York NY 10003
www.creativetime.org

Creative Time Books is the publishing arm of Creative Time,
Inc., a public arts organization that has been commissioning
adventurous public art in New York City and beyond since
1972.

The MIT Press
55 Hayward Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
www. mitpress.mit.edu

M IT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts
for business or sales promotional use. For information, please
email special_sales(3mitpress.mit.edu or write to Special Sales
Department,The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge,
MA 02142.

First edition, 2012

ISBN 978-0-262-01734-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011941569
10 98765432

Al WEIWEI
ALA PLÅSTICA

JENNIFER ALLORA AND GUILLERMO CALZADILLA
ARA ALM ARCEGUI AND BEGONA MOVELLÅN
ALTERNATE ROOTS
FRANCISALYS
APPALSHOP

JULIETA ARANDA AND ANTON VIDOKLE
CLAIRE BARCLAY
BAREFOOT ARTISTS
BASURAMA
BIJARI

BREAD AND PUPPETTHEATER
TANIABRUGUERA
CAMP

CEMETI ART HOUSE
PAULCHAN
MELCHIN

CHTO DE AT? (WHAT IS TO BE DONE?)

SANTIAGO CIRUGEDA
CAMBA ACHE COLECTIVO
PHIL COLLINS

CÉLINE CONDORELLI AND GAVIN WADE
CORNERSTONE THEATER COMPANY
ALICE CREISCHER AND ANDREAS SIEKMANN
MINERVACUEVAS

DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ARTRESIDENCY
JEREMYDELLER
MARK DION, J. MORGAN PUETT,

AND COLABORATORS
MARILYN DOUAA-BELL AND DIDIER SCHAUB
ELECTION NIGHT, HARLEM, NEW YORK
FALLEN FRU IT

BITA FAYYAZI, ATA HASHEMINEJAD, KHOSROW
HASSANZADEH, FARID JAHANGIR AND
SASSAN NASSIRI
FINISHING SCHOOL
FREE C ASS FRANKFURT/M
FRENTE3 DE FEVEREIRO
THEASTER GATES

ALONSO GIL AND FEDERICO GUZMÅN
PAUL GLOVER
JOSH GREENE
FRITZ H AEG
HAHA

HELENAPRODUCCIONES
STEPHEN HOBBS AND MARCUS NEUSTETTER
FRAN ILICH

TELLERVO KALLEINEN AND OLIVER KOCHTA-KALLEIN EN

AM AL KENAWY

SURASI KUSOLWONG

BRONWYN ACE AND ANTHEA MOYS

SUZANNE ACY

AND FOUNDATION

LONG MARCH PROJECT

LOS ANGELES POVERTY DEPARTMENT

RICKLOWE g|

MAMMALIAJM DMNG REFLEX
MARDIGRÅSINDIAN COMMUNITY
ANGE A MELITOPOULQS
ZAYD MINTY
THE MOBILE ACADEMY
MUJERES CREANDO
VIKMUNIZ

NAVIN PRODUCTION STUDIO
NEUE SLOWENISCHE KUNST (NSK)

NUTS SOCIETY
JOHN 0'NEAL
ODAPROJESI

PARK FICTION AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY
NETWORK HAMBURG
PASE USTED

PIRATBYRÅN (THE BUREAU OF PIRACY)

P ATFQRMA 9.81
PUBLIC MOVEMENT
PULSKAGRUPA
PEDRO REYES
AURIE JO REYNOLDS
ATHI-PATRA RUGA

THE SAN FRANCISCO CACOPHONY SOCIETY
THESARAI PROGRAMMEATCSDS ANDANKi
CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF
FLORIAN SCHNEIDER
KATERINASEDÅ
CHEMI ROSADOSEIJO
MICHIHIRO SHIMABUKU
BUSTER SIMPSON
SANGUAGE
SUPERFLEX

APOLONIJA éUéTERSlC
TAHRIR SQUARE

TALLER POPU AR DE SERIGRAFIA
(POPU AR SUKSCREEN WORKSHOP)

temporary Services

TOROLAB

MIERLE ADERMAN UKELES
ULTRA-RED

UNITED IltølAN HEALTH SERVICES
URBAN BUSH WOMEN
US SOCIAL FORUM
BIKVANDERPOL
JEANNE VAN HEESWIJK
WENDELIEN VAN OLDENBORGH
EDUARDO VÅSQUEZ MARTIN
VOINA

MARION VON OSTEN
PETER WATKI NS
WIKILEAKS
ELIN WIKSTROM
WOCHENKAUSUR
WOMEN ON WAVES
THEYESMEN

Printedand bound in Hong Kong

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142
http://mitpress.mit.edu

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